I tried to get out of Mumbai more-or-less as soon as I could. Now I was sitting on a minibus, weaving slowly north through the evening traffic: I was still a little unsure about whether this bus really was going to Bijapur - everybody at the ticket office had said something different.
About 10pm we stopped. We’d been driving for a couple of hours, but we were still in Mumbai, or at least, some dark and cluttered version of Mumbai on the northern outskirts. The streets here seemed dedicated to wholesalers, warehouses and depots… except that such things in Australia would be enormous metallic barns, whereas here they were crammed into much smaller buildings by the side of a narrow street. Electric lights festooned a row of stalls out in the street: noodles, fried snacks, DVDs and other tat.
I got off the minibus, only because everyone else had got off. Larger coaches were lurking in a sidestreet nearby - I found out which one went to Bijapur, but it wasn’t clear how long before it departed. So I just got on and sat in the darkness, waiting. I had bought spicy noodles and veg at one of the stalls, and I ate them out of a plastic bag. Even this cheap snack-in-a-bag tasted exceptionally good.
The bus to Bijapur took ages. During the night it stopped at mysterious places, where things cost more than usual. At a roadside place some time after midnight there were more stalls, this time selling plastic cooking implements. I met some other foreigners here: Italian Christians, who were going to Bijapur to work in a centre for people with HIV.
I slept for a while, then woke to find us moving through the pale blue of early morning. We were in an almost desert-like area now: a beautiful dawn with different colours in the sky, crisp air rushing in from the bus window. We moved past small villages, where people had let their houses be painted to advertise softdrinks and mobile phone companies. A lot of the villagers were up already, carrying water, or washing themselves at the water-pumps by the side of the highway. There were a lot of goats, seemingly untethered. Did anybody own them?
It was late morning by the time we got to Bijapur. It was a small town, but it was busy, dusty, and there were more goats. It was difficult for the bus to get into the yard of the bus-station, because swarms of people, cows, goats and rickshaws caused a general gridlock.
As usual I needed a hotel first, and although this involved some trudging through the growing midday heat, I was above all glad to be out of Mumbai. The first hotel I went into was the Karnataka State run place, and though it was a bit noisy, and not cheap by Indian standards, I was tired enough to go for it. Four or five staff were scattered around the building, lazy and probably contented with their state salaries. I think I was the only guest.
I had a big tiled room, and I tried to take a nap. But it was hot and the traffic noise was quite intense. I lay there and thought about what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure yet if my India trip had been a good idea.
I had agreed to meet my friend Annabelle in Mysore, but Mysore was a long way south, and I had to make it back to Mumbai in 9 days to catch a flight onwards to Australia. So I had some calculations to make: what route should I take, how many days could I tarry in various places?
While I was considering all this, I was mindlessly playing with a small bottle of cinnamon oil that I’d bought in Mumbai. I got it at a street-stall, and the vendor had tried to tell me that I didn’t really want it, and that it was “spice oil”; but I basically ignored him, because everyone in Mumbai was telling me to do or not do things all the time. Now as I sat in the hotel room trying to make a plan, I dabbed a bit of cinnamon oil on my tired shoulders and back.
The smell was heady, heavy and exotic. As I closed the bottle, I felt a warm tingle on my skin, much like the effect created by “tiger balm”. That seemed nice. But in the following seconds, the warm glow heated up, and I quickly began to feel an intense burning on my skin. I jumped up and bolted into across the room, into the bathroom, where I turned on the tap and stood under it, trying to rinse the oil off my skin. By this point my skin was stinging unbearably, and I was writhing under the cold water of the tap, shouting. This went on for about a minute, before the heat gradually began to subside.
Eventually I left the bathroom, still with a potent heat in my skin. I put clothes on, and decided that I might just stay one night in Bijapur. It was time to go out and see the town.
I visited first the most famous monument, “Gol Gumbaz”, a massive tomb built by some sultan to house his mortal remains. There were many Indian tourists there, but no other white people. From the moment I entered, I had a stream of Indians greeting me and questioning me. It was like being famous. One of the people who started talking to me was a young guy - maybe 20 or so - called Bal, who spoke a bit of English. He began walking along with me around the monument, asking more and more questions in the Indian style. It soon became apparent that he had attached himself to me - not in some malignant way, I was fairly sure that this wasn’t some trick or scam. It was more a case that in India, intimacy is assumed, where in the West, distance is assumed. In the West, you can’t just start hanging around with someone, without first reaching some kind of understanding. In India it seems both acceptable and normal.
So I left Gol Gumbaz, and walked around Bijapur with this guy Bal. We walked into the backstreets, which were dusty and poor. People looked out at us from run-down houses: we were a curiosity: an out-of-town Indian walking along with a white man. We smoked beedies, and talked in our broken English. I did wonder a little if he might have some ulterior motive: a business opportunity, a money opportunity. But neither scenario seemed right: Bal was not trying to sway me towards any particular destination, any particular path. Instead, I led the way to where I knew from my map that there were some old mosques, and together we strolled around the quiet courtyard of the “Jamia Masjid”. It was very peaceful there: the courtyard was quiet and graceful, with a rectangular formal pool in the middle. On one side was the mosque itself: a simple but beautiful design of repeated white arches on narrow columns, within forming a grid over the floor tiled in blue and white. The only other feature was on the front wall, where ornate shrines elaborated out of golden Arabic calligraphy. Within this cool, peaceful canopy, there was a bookshelp holding many copies of the Quran, and a single observant knelt praying between the columns.
After the Jamia Masjid we kept walking through more dusty streets. We were in a very poor Muslim neighbourhood, and here some people looked at us quite suspiciously. Others smiled and said hello. We passed a group of young men out the front of a shop, and one of them made hissing noises at us. This made me angry, but there was nothing worth doing but to return him a dirty look.
It was a hot late afternoon now, and my throat was dry from the beedies. I bought mango juice for both of us. Then Bal led me to a Hindu temple, where there were lots of people, and lots going on, none of which could I understand. There was perhaps some kind of lesson being held inside the temple, or maybe it was just standard prayer, and music, candles, people everywhere sitting on the ground. Everything was very colourful, and as usual, everyone was looking at us. But for some reason Bal didn’t find what he was looking for, so we left the temple, and then he went off to return to his hometown.
Evening started to fall, and I kept walking around the dusty town. I ate dinner, which was again incredibly good, and again locals talked to me freely. I marvelled at people’s social skills, their lack of hang-ups. I felt happy now, happy and far from home. I bought a bottle of beer and went back to my hotel room, where I had beer and beedis. With beer lightening my thoughts, smoking a beedi on my own, in the small garden at the back of the hotel, I began to get over my India-shock. At last I began to get the feeling of having arrived somewhere.
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