prolong my gaze to find out. I shift my view to the front of car where the toilets are, basically two reeking holes in the bottom of the train. This “express” train seems to stop about every five minutes. Everyone is bedded down when the train stops and out of the blackness our car is attacked. What seems to be dozens of men are beating on the car, beating very hard. There are bars on the windows and we have the doors bolted. The attack goes on and on. I am terrified. I look around to see how the rest of the passengers are reacting. They looked terrified as well and that does not comfort me. My thoughts, and maybe theirs as well, goes back to the stories and films I have seen about Hindus attacking trains of Muslims and Muslims attacking trains of Hindus and slaughtering the passengers during the time of the Pakistan partition. I push my bag against the door for more reinforcement and finally the train begins to move again and the attack stops. Everyone on the car goes back to sleep. It is dark and the windows are so filthy that I can’t see out. All train station markings that are lit are in Hindi. There is no way for me to know where my stop is. I am sick that I will miss Gaya and spend the entire night on this dreadful train. After a while a man gets up to go to the toilet. On his way back he says to me, “The next stop is Gaya.” What a relief. I get off and follow others who have detrained to find the depot. The station looks like one of the lower regions of Hell. Literally thousands of people are laying on the floors sleeping under rags. I remember my horror at the homeless in the subways of New York in the late 1980’s. The scene in front of me now is vastly worse, so many families, so many children.
It is about 1:00 a.m. and I know I can’t get to Bodh Gaya tonight. No travel is advised at night in the Indian state of Bihar where I am now. I look in my travel book for a hotel close to the train station and find one directly across the street that is given a good recommendation. I drag my stuff over and deal with desk people who are even more rude and indifferent than the last hotel. I get a room and pull my bags in. The travel book is wrong. It is the dirtiest room I have ever seen. I try not to let any of my things come in contact with any of the surfaces, but I am exhausted and can’t face the street again tonight. I settle in a bit and lay on top of the blanket using my meditation cushion as a pillow. It is incredibly loud. The room directly across the hall is playing a boom box full blast with Hindi pop music. Am I going to go tell them to turn it off? I think not. I try ear plugs but it really doesn’t matter I still can’t sleep – four sleepless nights in a row now.
December 30
Mahabodhi Temple, Bodhgaya
When I decide to get moving in the morning at about 6:00 a.m. I feel my luck must change today, it has been just too horrible so far. I eat a few crackers with peanut butter that Sammy was wise enough to get me to bring and drink a little of the bottled water I brought from Swiss Airlines. I repack what little I have unpacked and try not to pick up any of the crud that layers everything.
I negotiate a price and hire an auto rickshaw driver to take me to Bodh Gaya, 18 kilometers to the south. There is heavy fog and mist. The vehicle has no windshield wiper so the driver has nearly no visibility. It doesn’t seem to slow him down as we speed through town. He is picking up other fares. I yell at him that I am his fare right now. He says OK but he needs to pick up his son - fine. Strange, his son seems to be about the same age as he is. Off we go to Bodh Gaya – it is very cold. We finally get there and find the Burmese Monastery where I have made reservations. Wrong. They have no reservation and no room for me. They show me a filthy basement with about a hundred cots out in the open. I can stay there if I wish. I think not. They say there are some guest houses just down the road I can check. I walk down the road realizing that my luck is not changing. I find one of the places, and they have a room that they show me. It is small, the floor is concrete\dirt and it doesn’t have a bathroom. I’m about to say no, but the young man who is trying to help really seems quite pleasant, a quality I haven’t run into yet in India. His English is quite limited so he goes and gets a young Tibetan monk who is staying there who has better English to help me understand the room rate and so on. The young monk is very nice. He seems to be able to feel my stress and offers me bread and jam with buttered and salted Tibetan tea for breakfast, which he had in his room. This kindness won me over. I take the room. It is 200 rupees per day, about $5.00.
I rearrange the room. It has two beds that have thin foam mattresses over wooden planks. I put both mattresses on one bed and make the other bed into a kind of studio table. Gupta, the young caretaker, has decorated the room with pages of old calendars depicting nearly the full pantheon of the primary Hindu Gods. There above me were Shiva, Durga, Ganesha, Krishna, and others – quite nice really. He also made a sign with the name of the guest house out of cut pieces of Styrofoam.
I decide to try to find an international phone to make a call to Sammy to let her know I’m all right (well, kind of) and where I’m staying. Gupta walks along as he seems to be finished with his shift. There is a phone just a little way down the road. These phones are all over India. You pay for direct dialed calls and there is usually a meter that shows you how many rupees you are spending as you talk. In every phone I used I found you nearly always have three or four young Indian men standing around and listening to every word you say. I do get Sammy and I try not to sound as bad as I feel as I know she is worrying about me. The calls are expensive so there is not much time for small talk. I decide to walk down and explore the market; Gupta comes along. He asks if I would like to see his family’s business. I say sure. He takes me to a tiny hardware store, one room about 10’ X 12’. Seven brothers and their families run the business and most live in a couple of small, attached rooms. Gupta makes me a cup of chai, tea cooked with milk, spices and sugar. I drink my tea and chat with his brothers and play a bit with one of his nephews. Then I’m on my way to explore more of the market.
It is a wild and crazy place. It seems that everything is sold here. Garbage is everywhere as are cows and other animals. People, bikes, scooters, auto rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws and taxis jostle one another for what little space there is in the muddy little road. The most obnoxious “stores” are the music cassette salesmen. They have set up enormous old speakers and are blasting at full volume Indian pop music. Children play hakey sack with strange little balls that look like bundles of rubber bands. They also play badminton in the streets among crowds of people. It makes for a very different game from what I’m used to.
I buy some oranges and bananas and return to my room for lunch and a rest. Afterwards I decide to go to Mahabodhi Temple, the great center of this Buddhist pilgrimage site. It is the temple that is built at the place where the Buddha reached his enlightenment and was able to start formulating his teachings. It contains a direct descendant of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha was meditating and a marker that designates the spot on which he sat. I pack my day bag with my painting supplies and camera, grab my sitting cushion and off I go. The beggars are dense around the entrance to the temple. I give one a coin and I am mobbed by a horde of them. I then see a sign asking tourists and pilgrims not to give to beggar children as they have better options for support if they choose to follow them. It sounds like a good idea to me.
I make my way into the temple grounds. It is wonderful. The temple soars 54 meters into the air. It is surrounded by smaller stupas and sculptural areas and great pippala trees. It is a bit run down but still amazing. It is literally alive with all kinds of people — monks, pilgrims, tourists, guards – so many activities going on everywhere. Chanting, prostrating, walking, praying, reading, decorating. It is a temple that is alive. They seem to be getting ready for a major celebration. A librarian from Patna with very good English strikes up an interesting but rather persistent conversation with me. After his questions finally get around to my marital status I figure out he is checking see if I’m gay. He discerns I’m not and goes away.
I do a considerable amount of photography being visually enthralled with the place. Dogs seem to be everywhere. They all have the same basic look – middle size, pointed ears, thin and sickly. They basically lay around and scavenge food. No one pays them much attention unless they get too close
