Glorious India: 10/20/10

I'm getting a Delhi cough. All the Deliwallahs (inhabitants of Delhi) have a cough, especially the taxi drivers, who often open the door, lean out and spit at traffic lights. The air is so polluted and there's so much dust that it's easy to get congested. Lois has been struggling with allergies and we both had sore throats a couple of days ago. For me, it's developing into a cough. Plus my nose is running and my allergy medicine isn't helping that much.

We got up relatively early today and went to the airport, where we went through layers and layers of security screening. Grace had both of her handbags picked through and sent back through the x-ray machine twice. Then we had a cup of coffee – real brewed coffee, not the instant kind that we've been having everywhere else and which has caused us to change to tea. It was nice to have real coffee again.

I'm trying to think of the best way – or any way -- to describe what we experienced today. It took us the entire day to get from Delhi to Kalimpong and I feel like we've gone from one end of India to the other. We started out in Delhi, the cosmopolitan city, bustling with traffic and overhung with pollution and we have finished the day in Kalimpong, on a mountain, way out in the country, miles from the nearest place.

To get here, we flew from Delhi to Bagdogra and then drove to Kalimpong, which sounds easy, but the drive took about 5 hours and took us up winding roads, through mountains, along the Tista (sp?) river. The roads were bad all the way – sometimes they devolved into dirt roads, sometimes they were single lane (which meant that people going in one direction had to stop to allow the people going in the other direction to pass). Many times we were driving within inches of the precipice and several times we got caught in traffic jams that were caused by two trucks trying to pass each other (one going in each direction), but not having enough room to pass. As usual with Indian traffic, the whole thing was a cooperative venture, with people getting out of their cars to direct the trucks and help them get through. In one case, the trucks did scrape each other, but the one that passed us didn't seem the worse for wear. I don't think you can be too attached to the integrity of the finish on your car if you drive around here.

There were a couple of places where the road actually corkscrewed and we went around and around and around and then around in the other direction. When I was here in 2006, we had a pretty hair-raising trip up and down the mountain to Ooty, but this trip made that one look like a day at the beach. I don't know who built these roads, but whoever it is should get a medal. For most of the way, the road we were on is the main road to Sikkim, so there was a lot of traffic. When we broke off to go to Kalimpong, the traffic became less. Darkness fell as well. Night falls very rapidly and very early here – one minute it's day and only a few minutes later, it's dead dark. By 6 p.m., it feels like 10 p.m. The good thing about driving in the dark is that it makes it easier to overtake because you can see the other person's lights coming in the opposite direction. Overtaking during the day can be hazardous because you have to use your horn to let any oncoming traffic know that you're coming and you have to hope that the other person can hear you or can stop or swerve in time to miss you. It all seems to work out and people seem to be used to driving this way and know what to look out for, so I wasn't very worried.

Enos Das Pradhan was here to meet us when we arrived. He's the former General Secretary of the Church of North India and the person that Grace and Jimmy have had a relationship with. He retired in August and has moved back to Kalimpong. We are staying at a hotel (more like a bed & breakfast) which is very nice and the people are accommodating. Enos is very nice, warm and jolly and I can understand why Grace and Jimmy have been talking so warmly about him. I'm looking forward to spending some time with him tomorrow and learning about his mission projects here in Kalimpong. We're also going to be meeting with the local clergy, so that should be interesting.

I'm sitting on my bed typing this just now and I've got the windows open. I can hear chirping outside that sounds like the coquilles (not sure if I've spelled that right) in the Caribbean. It's a nice sound. The bed is hard, as are all Indian beds, so the porter very kindly spread a couple of comforters on the bed to make it more spongy (his word). I don't mind Indian beds – my back seems to do better on them than my bed at home. It's supposed to go down to 30 degrees F. tonight, which I'm looking forward to. I like sleeping in the cold (especially without air conditioning).

Reflection: Bollywood

If there’s one thing to know about Indians, it’s that they love their movies and if you want to understand Indian and Indian culture, a good way to start is by watching their movies. Indians will take what little disposable income they have and spend it on the movies and there are traveling trucks that go around with film projectors and a sheet so that even villagers in the remotest place in India can get their movie fix. The most commonly used movie snack, according to Robert Krulwich, is the potato, because Indian movie snacks are based on the potato. The Indian movie industry releases almost double the number of films as Hollywood (850 v. 450) and the movies are popular all over the world.

It’s hard for westerners to understand Bollywood movies sometimes. This is because they’re based on two entirely different art forms: Hollywood movies are based on western storytelling (some say the style dates from the Victorian novel), which proceeds in a more or less linear fashion. Bollywood movies, on the other hand, are based on Urdu theater and feature discontinuity of time and space. This is why, for example, Bollywood films feature multiple costume changes within the same song or why our hero can drive out of Mumbai and into Switzerland with no explanation to the audience. Bollywood filmmakers are also more self-conscious in their use of the medium, so in many cases, they are winking to the audience and saying, “It’s a movie.” In Hollywood, on the other hand, we are often meant to be looking at a movie as if it is through a window or an all-seeing eye. There’s also the storytelling style, which is more akin to Dickens, with elaborate plotlines, multiple subplots and extended flashbacks. Songs are interludes and can give the moviegoer an insight into the mind or feelings of the character and may or may not advance the plot. They also provide a great opportunity to go out to the snack bar and get some more samosas, which many people do in the movie theater.

A common misconception about Bollywood movies is that they are syrupy-sweet romances that always end happily. To the contrary, Bollywood films take on difficult subjects like terrorism, communal violence, suicide bombings, police corruption and miscarriages of justice. And at the end, some of the characters go to jail, die or commit suicide, hardly happy endings. The moral order is upheld in most of the films, though, and that can make the filmgoer happy, although it doesn’t always ensure what we in the West would consider a happy ending.

As in the West, film stars are used for advertisement. Here are some billboards with Bollywood stars that we saw along the way: