ARRIVAL IN INDIA-
A WORLD AWAY FROM THE RECENT SAVAGERY SEEN IN NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON,
YET DISCONCERTINGLY NEAR THE CENTER OF THE ANTI-AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALIST FOMENT,
WHILE HEADING INTO THE BUDDHIST PACIFIC HIMALAYAN HIGHLANDS
Sep. 18-19, 2001
I arrived in Delhi around 2:00 AM-although what time that is on my own clock, I haven't a clue. The big box of medicines, which has occasioned such a lot of trouble in re-collecting it after its check-in on Tuesday morning, precisely a week ago before the world changed forever, did NOT. It is probably an early victim of the excess security checks now in play. With the Nepal MAP packs, which made a round trip to Boston as I did, likewise in vain, are still in the possession of Elizabeth Yellen in DC, but I could afford to proceed, since I had the oversize box full with the overage forwarded from Meg Irwin, as it had arrived too late for Ladakh. And now it has "gone missing" so I have a total of NO medicines with me. There were two MAP packs coming from Atlanta with Bill Norton on a delayed arrival, but just now I have learned that he-and far more important-THEY, are not coming at all. That means we have to either find and forward this big box, or we will have to make do with the leftovers from t he last trip that had gone on to Simla along with my stashed bag from Ladakh, and whatever Ravi was able to buy along the way.
Just re-collecting this box and forwarding it is not a small matter. It will be in the India Customs if it comes in and I have just certified its contents, although it does not have a bill of lading and gift certificate attached, as do the MAP packs. I must personally reclaim it with my passport, or send a copy of my passport with the original documents I have got stamped from India Customs and an affidavit, notarized, authorizing whomever to pick it up. That might be the agent here in Delhi, but then, how would it get forward? For that matter, how do I?
After hassling the formalities for two hours, it was quite late when I walked out with my half empty duffel (now that the Colorado hunting gear is out of it, I had planned to dump the medicine box contents into the huge duffel in which is only my backpack at present, so that the medicines could travel without attracting attention) I spotted a driver who had been waiting for hours with a sign with my name on it. His English was rudimentary, but he asked what I wanted to do. I suggested going to check in the Jukasso Inn, since even if it is only for a couple of hours, it is where I have been before and a message might await me there. So, that is what we did, when I was handed an envelope from Ambassador Travel by the driver. It was a ticket for the Express Train to Chandrigarh for 7:40 AM-only now about three hours away. OK-here we are. I checked into the Jukasso Inn as the driver slept in his car, with my bags still locked in the "boot." At 6:00 AM I checked out, and was driven to the station. I tipped both the driver and the porter 100 Rupees (at today's post-terrorist devaluation my pocket-ful of rupees is 48.5 R's = $1.00 US), and each went into effusive thanks and hand clasping.
BY EXPRESS TRAIN
FROM DELHI TO CHANDRIGARH
I watched again as the irrigated rice and maize fields of the Gangetic Plain slipped by the window in my "A/C Chair Car First Class" seat. I read the newspapers on this now day number eight since the strike. The local papers are very much full of the Pakistani role in arming and supplying the Taliban from the strong Islamic fundamentalist presence in Pakistan, with headlines showing demonstrations in Karachi waving placards announcing "Osama-Our Herrow!" It seems that India has promptly offered its own air bases to the US since it is wary of Pakistan asking the US for help against India over the "J and K Issue"-conflicting claims on the Kashmir, while Pakistan has been rejected by the Taliban as a mediator to hand over bin Laden
SW ASIA POLITICS
IN PLAYING THE "AMERICA CARD"
AGAINST THE AFGHAN TALIBAN,
AND AGAINST MOSLEM FACTIONS IN
WARRING ADVERSARIES INDIA AND PAKISTAN
I am going to the Spiti Valley, which the map on today's Hindustani Times shows is sandwiched between Pakistan and Afghanistan, so I will be conducting my continuing humanitarian medical mission in the Taliban's backyard. So be it. This is my own continued statement, defying any extremist single-issue fundamentalists to bend the world to their own particular purpose-since I may have a few causes of my own that still need to be conducted according to my -perhaps less divinely and directly inspired revelations-but I must get back to work in SW Asia and I refuse to be intimidated by those demon-possessed,
. When the train arrived in Chandrigarh, I got out staggering under my big duffel as a "shoulder bag" and wobbled out into the crowd of humanity, which is India. The masses congregate on the train platforms, sleeping on the concrete, and lying like road kill in front of traffic. As I had almost despaired of seeing anyone I knew and trying to get around in the melee, I turned to return, if for no other reason than to get to the "Lounge" (The "What's in a name?" contest could use the example of the label on this plain room with a hole in the concrete floor as the "Gent's") As I did so, a breathless and sweaty young man came running and I had recognized him. He had been a driver for our group about three missions ago. We loaded my stuff in his tiny tinny car, and without a seat belt. In the succession of vehicles, I had seen seat belts in each, but always knotted up and tucked away to prevent their flapping in the wild careening of the car around the hairpin turns and "overtaking". This latter term no doubt would be translated as "passing" but for the fact that it reminds me of "undertaking" which it closely resembles, since the only defense against the oncoming lorries and other vehicles that one does not see in pulling out for a blind pass is the horn. Once the horn is hooted, it is a transfer of fault to whomever is still coming straight at one, since there is no "lane" that anyone respects.
A DEATH-DEFYING "HILL COUNTRY" RIDE
FROM CHADRIGARH TO SIMLA
Each time I have tried to unknot the seatbelt and get it to work (futile, since it is often cut off as well as tucked away) I am told "No need!" That is right. The road signs are inspiring in a cheerful "public health preventive message" states: "ACCIDENT IS ALWAYS FATAL IN HILL COUNTRY: USE CAUTION" This self-fulfilling prophecy was witnessed in at least one episode along the way, since my driver wanted to "overtake" continually as a point of honor, to get me to Simla earlier than the estimate of 3 ½ hours and 120 kilometers, despite the wild wiggles in the road up through the "Hill Country." I checked later against the GPS, and it translates to 37 miles on the Great Circle, but because of the terrain, this should take any reasonable person about six hours if everything were perfect.
In my "Passage to India" not everything has been perfect, as you no doubter already suspected, but I somehow made the trop to Simla in 3 ¼ hours, and lived to tell about it. I met Raju who was waling down the street from the Holiday Home Hotel, where I had stayed on my prior visit to Simla. Raju is home amid the clan of his father's and friends, such as Ravi. One of my first orders of business will be to make a social call on his brother Baldev Kanwer, with whom I had climbed to Everest Base Camp and had summited Kala Patthar in 1999. Their father had had some heart trouble and they had asked a year later if I could write a letter of reference to get him into the medical school at Simla called the Indira Handy Medical Center. I did. He was operated on in January and had a successful coronary bypass. But a few months later he had deep venous thrombosis and a badly swollen leg. I had sent forward articles I had written on the subject after I had heard about it when on the Dharamsala mission in April, and they were very eager that I should visit, even if it was fresh (if that adjective describes conditions at the end of the 48-hour-journey) off the plane, train, and small car "overtaking " through the Hill Country."
We drove from Simla in the direction of the Kinnaur Valley where I had gone on my first trip in Himachal. Along the way, we stopped to pick up a very dapper looking fellow in a suit and tie-Baldev! He had left his paramilitary unit in Kullu where he now lives, in charge of a subordinate officer and had driven the four hours here from Kullu in order to greet me and to stay a few days with his father in the country cottage with the slate roof, where they have often invited me, insisting I stay with them for weeks. We went first to a new building along the road which Baldev is having constructed for commercial rent and also a place to expand his holdings. Right after he led the ascent of Everest and the first all women's team including the youngest summiteers whom I had met last year in Manali, the Indian government had given him a cash prize for this achievement he had carried out in the name of his Indian mountaineering club CMAS under the ibex emblem, which I am now a member of, with tie and pin to show for it from his climbing partner Rajeev (2000 end of Ladakh mission). Baldev had taken the money and invested it in some hill country outside Simla called Fatto, where he had bought an old British officers' hunting lodge. The Brits had come up here in the time of the Raj to escape the summer heat, and also for a bit of the sporting life, including the hunting of ibex, snow leopards and tigers. Baldev has had the lodge renovated and a number of tenants and squatters are living in and around it, all of who came over to show allegiance to their landlord. He pointed out from the roof of the new building some distance from the older lodge, that we could see the entire range of mountains around this green valley, including the highest peak Shivalek. Only ten minutes walk away through the steep hillside paths is the home of his father, but we would drive around on a hillside access road to get closer to it.
I had remembered that Signi Paige, who had "hung out" endlessly in India with ambitions to be a doctor but not enough initiative to complete an application process that might get her accepted for the very different and arduous process of becoming a medical student, and she had been invited to stay for the usual weeks as their guest. With no job or anything better to do, she became their token "American guest" and she was taken around to neighbors and others to see what this small area offered in hospitality. She had called them "grandfather and grandmother" and as a mark of respect would get to her knees and clasp their feet, until they lifted her and waved off this expected sign of respect. I had learned a bit about this slate roofed cottage and the extended family that calls it home before Raju, Baldev and I came down the steep path to visit it set amid gardens of cabbages and potatoes.
When I came around the front of the portico with the roses all spread over trellises, (Raju's handiwork) I was surprised to receive the homage I had heard that should be given. The patriarch came forward and made to embrace my feet, but I tried to divert that act of honor and raise him. He is rather hale and hearty despite the operation and the subsequent complication. His left thigh, which had been huge, is now down to just a bit of brawny edema and will probably improve still further. I went over all his carefully wrapped and preserved medical records, which he had gathered for me. Baldev had said he encountered him in the morning shaving and getting ready for the visit of a distinguished guest. I noted that he had been on Digoxin, but to improve his appetite his doctors had taken him off the drug. Coincident with that change he was no longer able to climb up the steep pathway to the road, since he got exert ional dyspnea at that climb, even though he could walk two kilometers of level ground. I made a few suggestions on some minor changes in tweaking his medicines a bit, and in a gentle note that congratulated them on the excellent care he was receiving (in order to avoid any jealousy of an American interloper) I wrote by their request a letter to his doctors. I also was asked to see their neighbor, another patriarch, who has had the classic features of GERD for 18 years and now describes the onset of symptoms of esophageal stricture. The medicines that might give him some relief are in the packs that are separated from me in their arrival but I will send back from whatever stock we have on our road trip through Raju some H-2 blockers for him to take a bedtime at least and see what more can be got for him. After the chai and biscuits, we were implored to return for a longer visit---several weeks would seem to be the minimum, and we drove off back to Simla having left Raju's car as well as Baldev's new one with which he had driven over from Kullu at the new building construction site, and we took the four door pickup truck that had been with the same driver our transportation around Dharamsala in April. We drove back toward the Holiday Home, where Raju said he would be going to his home, but insisted I go down to the restaurant and order anything I would like for dinner, as he would be back at nine in the morning to begin our trip.
With the weariness of the long journey and the far side of the world time zone changes, I bagged dinner altogether and went straight to bed, figuring I would have a fresh (this time the term does apply) look at regrouping in the early morning.
And, so, to bed.