The Pilgrimage

By Greta Mattei

My head leaning on the window, my eyes trying to catch the images that rolled by as the train noisily slid on the tracks.

It was only the fourth day in India and I was already worn out. I had been laying in bed sick for the past three days and my stomach still felt full and sore from the immoderate meal we had in Old Delhi the night before. My sense of pain probably increased from seeing infinite unfed people walking around shanty towns 50 feet from the omelet that was sitting on my little train table and which I didn’t even have the strength to gulp down. It was shame that I felt for the first time.

What made me so lucky? Why was I born in this family?

I put the bread and the omelet inside a bag and decided to give it to a beggar at the next train stop. As the doors opened a blast of sticky and humid air hit my face. I didn’t even have time to look around before noticing that a skeletal ten-year-old boy had quickly reached for my food. He was leaning on his crutches, his head was bandaged by a dirty cloth stained with blood and the lower part of his left leg was missing.

I knew my omelet wasn’t going to make any difference and again I felt weak and valueless as the doors closed in my face. I dragged my feet to my seat, sat down, and desperately tried to move my mind away from the image of that boy’s deep black eyes’ glance.

How else can I help him? I tormented myself as the train palely rocked on. You better get used to it, I concluded as I forced myself to sleep.

My father had planned this trip only a few weeks before. He had to lecture in New Delhi and Bangalore so my parents came to the conclusion that it would be a nice opportunity to take a family trip. We would go to India the whole month of July, they determined, regardless of all our Indian friends’ advice not to go during the wrong season. “It’s not a very pleasant time to travel, in the monsoonal climate, we were repeatedly told. Didn’t matter, my dad hates other tourists and the possibility of avoiding them made him book the tickets with no second thoughts. We were all excited to leave and the idea of eating authentic Indian food for a whole month made me even more enthusiastic. My mom, my sister, my dad and I were mentally and physically prepared to endure heat, rain, wind and any other climate inconvenience. But my sister and I weren’t too ready to confront real poverty.In fact this was my first time in the “third world”. I had no idea of what undernourished people were like, or what seeing people dying on the ground meant. Our first impression had been quite shocking: cars driving in undefined lanes, traffic jams and masses of people walking on the streets because they didn’t fit on the side walks. And most dreadful of all was the uncountable number of people in serious need. Millions of kids asking for money, some were deformed and some entertained car passengers with acrobatic tricks at stop lights.

“Children’s exploitation,” I was later told by our local friend. “Kids are captured at a tender age and put on the streets to raise money. Some are even permanently crippled to compassionate passers.” Thousands of adults and elderly were laying on the streets with little hope and motivation to make it to the next day. I felt sick right as we got to the hotel and I spent the next two days laying in bed.

Maybe it’s the smell or what I just saw that makes me feel this way, we all tried to theorize. No, “It was simply your extremely low blood pressure that decreased with the incredible heat and humidity” my doctor later explained. My condition of infirmity brought my family to the conclusion to leave New Delhi for Rischikesh.

As I tried to remove the boy’s image from my mind I thought of what Rischikesh could be like. “The soul’s paradise,” all the guides stated. We read travelling books and asked friends: yes Rischikesh was the right place to go. A place of serenity, where the Ganja River touches the plain for the first time, where the water is unpolluted and pure. A divine little town. Sleep in a peaceful ashram, eat succulent food, take wonderful walks and do yoga. There I could recover while my family took nice walks immersed in nature. Rischikesh was our destination and our train was directed to a nearby town. It was all perfectly planned out: a 20 minutes cab drive would bring us to our accurately selected ashram.

My eyes squinted from the sunlight as we stepped off the train and the air felt even sticker on my skin after six hours of air conditioning.

It took me a while to see the amount of people everywhere, lying on the cement, sleeping or busily eating a strange, yellow tinted, mush. Panhandlers repairing from the scorching sun, I thought. But as my eyes fixed I noticed diversity from the New Delhi street populace.

“Stop day dreaming, Greta!” my dad brutally interrupted. I threw my bag over my shoulder and chased my family zigzagging among groups of people. My mouth could taste the flavor of human odor in the thick air. I wanted to escape from that human mass but the more I walked away from the train stop, the more people surrounded me. I could barely breathe and the exit seemed unreachable.

“We made it!” my mom said with relief as we arrived to the square external to the station. We all dropped our heavy bags on the ground and looked around us: same scenery, thousands of people sitting on the ground. They were all dressed with orange outfits, the little ones were bald like their fathers and had suns and moons drawn on their faces. Men walked around with orange togas while women sat on plastic mats.

Maybe it’s my claustrophobia that makes me notice more people than there really are, I tried to calm myself.

“Now what should we do?” my sister began frantically flipping the tourist guide’s pages. A significant percentage of time in the trip was spent discussing our plans and my sister was generally the boss.

Clara and I haven’t gotten along ever since I was nine and she entered the 6^th grade. Relatives and friends tried to explain our broken bond saying that it was a “transitory detachment”, that it was “normal” for her teen-aged to suddenly not consider me anymore. “As soon as puberty goes by everything will be okay again between you two, it’s just a matter of time” my mom reassured me as I felt a strange sense of resentment in that word, puberty. So years went by but my hope to win my sister back slowly vanished. My parents probably figured that a month together could bring us back on good terms and establish a new relationship between us. Sharing the same bedrooms for 25 days made me start studying every little aspect of her behavior. Maybe it was my low blood pressure that made me unable to tolerate the energy that made her set the alarm clock every morning at 5 to go on a run. Maybe it was only because she was so noisy when dressing and leaving the room. I couldn’t bear seeing her leftovers every time we went to a restaurant or her unpredictable mood swings: either fuming or annoyingly content, but always hectic. Her goal, and I must say I admired her, was to see as many places and assimilate as much knowledge in the least amount of time possible. This is why she never failed to carry her blue backpack filled with books of all thickness and matter, from Hegel’s philosophy to Buddhist yoga tips. But having around such an energetic person in a moment of heat and fatigue wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I decided not to chime-in to the conversation about what to do and just made the most worn out expression I could on my face. I was hoping my family would agree to hop on a taxi and get to the ashram where I could’ve lied on a pleasant and comfortable bed. My dad seemed not to hear my sister’s inquiry, busy skimming through his “About Hinduism” book. My mom was concentrated on smiling at the two little boys holding hands who were bravely approaching her. They were studying the different looking woman with a skeptical gawk on their faces.

“Here it is!” my father announced and began to read. “Aridwar, a fascinating town crossed by the Ganja River, one of the sacred towns to Hindus. We must check this out before directing towards Rishischikesh,” he ultimately proclaimed. We then decided to leave our bags in the cloakroom for a few hours in order to make our tour a little lighter. My mother and I stood still while my dad and sister took care of our luggage.

The sun was rising and I could feel the reflection on the black shiny cement make my cheeks burn. The hottest hours of the day were still ahead of us. I focused again on the people around us; my mom was confused trying to understand what they were doing. After a few minutes a crowd of orange figures encircled the two outsiders; their eyes were all fixed on us, some whispered and some giggled. Not knowing exactly what to do we timidly smiled at our spectators. Slowly each one of them reached in their bag and took out a black plastic camera.

“Picture?” the most daring one asked. We didn’t even have the time to consult each other before they began posing next to us. They slowly came closer until hugging us and I wondered how many refrigerators my stupid smile was going to end up on. We both thought this was going to be a one time event so my mom and I patiently smiled at the cameras hoping someone would come rescue us soon. However, when my father and sister arrived the crowd was thrilled to see more potential fridge decorations.

We left our fans and headed towards the town’s pride. The Ganja River was wide and the brown waters were brutally carrying trash down its trail. The river sidewalk was full of joyful orange people crudely getting tattoos done, selling spices and bathing in the waters.

“These waters can cause mortal diseases, careful not to touch them” my father warned. Strangely not many people were asking us for money as we walked through the cheerful crowd. But by the time we got to the second bridge and decided to leave the town we became aware that we were actually leading a multitude of orange figures. Astonished, we felt like secreted divinities conducting its worshippers. My mom was heated by the temperature and shortly got irritated by the screaming and their “far too physical” behavior. My father, sister, and I laughed at her hypocritical tolerance towards other cultures and repeatedly mentioned the people’s friendliness.

We hopped in the cab and communicated to the driver, with difficulty, where we had to go, he seemed to understand. In twenty minutes the taxi stopped in front of a small, dirty white building isolated by a long dirt road.

The entrance was dark and the stained gray couches’ cloth was slightly wet from the humidity that filled the air. I sat down anyway and waited for my dad to take care of business, he always negotiated a little before getting the reserved rooms. But this time it wasn’t a matter of haggling down the price, there were no free rooms. I felt somewhat relieved knowing I would not have to spend the next three days in that strange Hindi temple where all you could do was yoga and meditation. So I helped my mom look through the guide for another place to go. We waited for another cab to come pick us up for about two hours. My dad spent this time anxiously walking back and forth the reception area repeating how stupid he was by not telling the driver to wait. He tried to understand what had made him so sure that he had booked rooms in this ashram. I napped on my mother’s shoulder listening to her voice read a book on the Indochinese Empire. My sister looked for a fruit stand and complained upon finding fried bananas instead of the pineapple she desired.

A wrecked car arrived and the dark skinned, white-haired driver explained to us that he was going to lead us to the ashram my dad had really reserved.

“No English” he said as we squished in the decrepit car. My dad pointed on a poorly drawn map where our destination was as the man nodded and the car noisily rolled on the long dirt road. I leaned on the window and peeked outside still feeling the heaviness of my sleepy eyes. As the car zigzagged through oncoming vehicles, people and cows; all I could see were orange walking figures. They were each carrying a plastic bottle, some were empty and some were filled with greenish water. As we waded towards the mountains the amount of people grew larger and larger. Differently paced (some kissed the ground every two steps while others rode their motorcycles) they all invaded the streets cheerfully yelling and honking. Obviously I wasn’t the only one wondering who these people were; my father, unable to clarify his doubts by conversing the driver, was searching through his variety of books for an explication.

According to the Hindi religion, every year in a certain moth the believers must travel to where the Ganja River contains the purest water, put it in a bottle and bring it home. This water will eventually be placed on the lips of the ill right before death to assure him an honorable spot in the next world. However, it is believed that you must walk to the sacred river. As the challenges of getting to the river increased, so did the likelihood of receiving a prestigious spot for your beloved ill.

And what was the town with the purest waters? Rischikesh of course. We hoped the majority of the people were already heading home so that we could enjoy the peace that everyone talked about once we made it there.

But the 40 minute car ride extended to a four and a half hour obstacle course.

Once we entered the town it was impossible for the taxi to go on. The driver though that leaving us on our feet would be the best thing to do. There was no way we were going to search for our vague ashram among an indefinable crowd in the 100 degree heat. “Yeah we can do this! It’s just a matter of crossing that bridge and having a little walk in the forest” my sister suggested. No, this was where I was going to draw the line. I definitely wasn’t in the mood to cross a rope bridge while being squished by millions of yelling people. My whole family opposed the suggestions of my sister and the driver, so we came to the conclusion to find an ashram reachable by car.

We then drove around decades of hotels and ashrams hoping to find one that could meet our initial high expectations. The driver was worn out and couldn’t believe how fussy and demanding westerns could be. We finally found an ashram that would satisfy our “needs”.

As I got off the taxi my feet stepped in to a mud puddle, a mixture of human wastes. Unfortunately it wasn’t just a puddle; the entire street was covered in a thick layer of brownish putrid water in which people splashed their bare feet. An inexpressible smell invaded my nose and I somehow managed to not throw up as the pores of my skin filled with fetid air. My father generously tipped the patient man and we entered the little building along the shore of the river. A large sized Brahmin lady welcomed us and ordered us to take off our shoes every time we entered her ashram. I quickly reached the room and laid in bed. I wasn’t yet aware that I was about to confront some the most challenging days of my life. In fact, as dinner ended an incredible pain hit my stomach and I was forced to spend the rest of my stay on the ashram’s dirty toilet seat.

On the train ride back to New Delhi I tried to encourage myself: this trip couldn’t get any worse.