Heading Home

Heading home, I must thread my way through a tangle of traveling threads. Life is never dull going west from India.

Usually I take a 5 a.m. train out of Dehra Dun that gets me to Delhi about noon. Since the Continental flight to Newark is listed as departing at 11:55 p.m. that means a long hangout in the Indira Ghandi airport. It’s not a bad airport but it’s dull as dust.

Hearing that there is a train leaving at 8:45, I ask if that is doable. Why not? Not knowing why not, I say “Why not?” That’s how you learn stuff. Let me tell you.

First of, not all trains here are equal. In the USA an Amtrak train is what it is—a string of various cars, mixing coaches with sleepers with diners with baggage and so on. In India, having more rail miles than any nation in the world, you would think that trains would be state of the art.

Ah, ……. No.

India’s roads are stuck in the 1950s. Totally. No interstate highways. Only in Delhi and only this decade, Delhi is getting a few overpasses to help the flow of traffic. So people move by bus and by train. Train is the better way, of course, since you do not have to stop at every intersection, as a bus must.

The poor people ride in what look like cattle cars. Filled with benches, you can squeeze a hundred or more people into each car. But it’s basic. No cushions, no fans, much less AC, just a cut above Hitler’s death cars that carried Jews to the final solution in the 1940s.

But the first class trains have seats that recline, a tray table, and a steel holder for your gratis litre of cold water. There are fans and even AC, plus hooks for your jacket and overhead baggage racks. You get some food in the ticket price, too. I think it is OK bordering on “nice,”

But the 8:45 train has no chair cars. All berth cars.

Scene I.

So picture this. A compartment open to the aisle, with two cushy seats facing each other. Fastened above your head is a drop-down “bed: platform", with a second above that. So when you sleep (and you do on many runs, for a Christmas trip home for my colleagues is a three days and three nights journey on the rails. That’s for a distance of 1000 to nearly 2000 miles in some cases, such as going to Kerala where Uncle George and most of the faculty hail from.) So there is no definable space that your ticket secures for you. No reclining. No personal tray tables.

OK I can handle this, right? Yes…after a fashion.

You see, my ticket is for “seat” number 1. In that compartment, however, is a couple with three kids, one an infant. She looks imploringly at me. “Would you mind taking the other seat we had to purchase at the far end of the car, so our family can sit together?” I cannot say No to that now, can I?

But my “handler” (for whom I thank God constantly) knows things are not that simple in India. “We’ll have to look at that seat and check with the ticket master first.” (He knows that another family may already be there and possibly spilling over into all available space.) But the adjacent cubicle has a woman who speaks up right away. “I have a ticket for a companion who could not make the train, so please take this space.” Sounds good. I agree.

Now just wait a second before you breathe a sigh of relief with me. This is India. It’s not going to be that simple.

This white woman is obviously from the USA, probably East Coast. She has a shaved head and is dressed in Tibetan Buddhist outfit—you know, the one with the maroon scarf thingy. I naively think she has the whole compartment bought up and that I will sit on one bench seat and she on the other. Looks OK. We go for it. I find out the she is of Jewish roots (non-practicing) and New York City area. At age 8 she thought of suicide because life, as she had it explained to her, “sucks and then you die.” So what’s the point? Then she heard about Buddhism. It made some sense. So now, in middle age, she has a resident visa and has been in India three years at various centers studying the ancient texts. She even is learning Tibetan!

Now across the aisle there is a narrow bunk parallel to the side of the train with a middle-aged Indian woman perched there. The attendant comes around with pillows and blanket-sheets so we can stretch out if we desire and catch some zzzzzzzs.

Chatting amiably, we suddenly are invaded by a family getting on at Haridwar—a favorite holy shrine for Hindus—who have the other seats in our vicinity. Of course, if we were all sleeping they would have those four upper bunks, plus the one over the lady across the aisle. They have as much baggage as the Clampetts would’ve had going home from their first visit to Disneyland.

Onto the upper berths they pile a zillion duffles and “onion” bags marked “walnuts” and shopping bags from the Indian gift shops. They want the woman to move off somewhere else. (I only get snatches as this is going on mostly in Hindi with occasional lapses into English.) She is not moving. Decibels are rising. Gestures are more menacing. I would guess this family is a higher caste than this woman and thinks they can bully her.

My companion is really a Jewess from NYC disguised as a Buddhist nun. She is not to be trifled with. And she knows this culture well, having lived here for three years. She starts to shout at them. “Why are you yelling and threatening this old woman? She has the seat she paid for. She has an injured knee and needs to stretch out. You are so rude. You Indians are not nice—I’ve had enough of you people throwing your weight around. You leave that woman alone!” After five minutes of this, the family backs off. Now they want to sit on the lower bench where the nun has her sheet and pillow.

But Mrs. Nun is ticked. No. You will not sit on my shelf. I am going to lie down. You go on the upper bunks you paid for. One of them looks at me imploringly, with his arm on his 8-year-old brother. Can we sit on your side? “O sure—why not?” So finally the dust settles. The nun lies down. The upper bunks are lowered (BTW you cannot sit up on that bottom bunk now unless you are under four feet in height—you bump your head on the bunk above.)

Mrs. Nun has a palm pilot and state-of-the-art cell phone (she has access to money, I’m sure, as she dropped the tidbit that she had given a bundle to one of these monasteries.) She is talking aloud—putatively to me, while she calls this one and that one because this train is running late and she will miss her connection to Andra Pradesh (a state in the south of India) and will need a driver to pick her up in Delhi and take her to a guesthouse she frequents, call the 100 monks who have already left the monastery for the overnight trek to the place they intend to pick up their benefactress, etc., etc.) For relief she spars with the Indian family, running down India as an intolerant ignorant country—you get the picture.

Meanwhile she is astonished that a philosopher like myself knows little about Buddhist philosophy. I ask her to tell me what she has learned. She makes a few stabs at it, showing me a copy of the scriptures she is studying—a sort of interlinear Tibetan and English version.

She is telling me about karma and how over the course of many lives you can work your way to enlightenment when the things of this half-real world no longer have an effect on you and you are released to become one with the One. Meanwhile, on the calls she is making she is twisting people’s arms to do her favors and using all kinds of bad words when the tech people on her Mobile Office help desk don’t know English, and so forth. She reminds me of what they used to call the Ugly American. “This lady is working up a huge pile of bad karma today,” I think to myself. “She is going to go around and around for along time!”

What a relief when after nearly six hours of this, my colleagues from the college’s Delhi division rescue me at the end of the line! I had started to answer her question (after my listening to her for a couple of hours) about what I believed. I got off a few ideas. But when I started to tell why I followed the Way of Jesus, she pointed to something out the window, changed the subject and dropped back into the Land of Complaints and Curses.

Next year it will be the early chair train for me. Even a cattle car if need be.

Scene II.

Out of the crowded station. Just recall if you can a scene in some old flick about the British in “In-jah” pushing their way through mountains of beggars, coolies, porters, and rickshaw drivers. That’s what it's like.

Now my two friends, Premji and Martin, are struggling with my big bag, loaded with books bound for the USA. The extended roll handle was busted by the baggage-smashers on my outgoing flight so bag cannot be rolled, especially on the stairs that get you over one platform and onto another. The small handles are not placed for two people. So they limp along like the Two Stooges, bag akimbo.

In the Land Rover we debate the prospects for my day. Go directly to airport. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Spend 10 hours in Jail at Indira Ghandi International. Or, go to Premji’s, take a rest, re-pack to meet airline weight requirements, and head for the airport later, shortening the wait to three hours. No contest. We’ll take the latter.

At Premji’s I am in the real India. No polished hotels, limos with unformed attendants, or gleaming Taj Mahals. Here is a neighborhood reminding me of Boston’s North End in the 1950s. Dust in the streets, dogs barking, and a kid driving a bicycle tire down the street with a stick. Cycles pass the slower ‘bike-shaws’ taking a couple downtown. People walk to the little convenience store across the street.

Up a narrow winding concrete staircase to the second floor (called first floor as it is over the ground floor) apartment. Premji’s wife, Lizy greets me with a big smile, showing me her sons, Blesson, age 6 and Ben, age 3. “Cup of tea?” “O yes—that would be welcome, thank you. But first I could use a toilet.” It's been seven hours since I left the Guest House.

I am pointed toward the balcony that overlooks the street. Wondering just what I will find, there is a door openng to a room about 4’x 5’ that has an opening in the floor about 12’x18” It is lined with china porcelain, slanting toward a 4” drain. An “Asian” toilet has no moving parts to fail as in western toilets with tanks and ball and cock gizmos and flappers. I came. I saw. I go-ed. (How do you say that in Latin?) Dip a quart cup into the pail of water, slosh it in, and we’re done. No muss, no fuss, no cuss!

The apartment, as in most tropical climes, is all concrete with terrazzo floors. Jambs and doors are wood. The living room is about 8’x11’ and has a table and small fridge on one end and a couch and coffee table on the other. The two bedrooms are about 8’x10’ with plywood platform beds that you can shift around or stack against the wall when the house church comes to meet here. One or two cabinets for your stuff and that’s it. Kitchen? 4’x7’ with a sink, counter-top 4 burner black gas cooker, a couple of cabinets on the walls. Basic. So in this flat that is about 400 square feet, including the balcony that has a tiny washing machine and some lines to string your laundry, this family of four lives and hosts their church.

I love it. They are low-profile and neighborhood based. A girl about 17 or 18 comes in – Ermela. She is all smiles. I get my camcorder to capture scenes in the street. Across is an apartment with a woman doing wash, kids playing at cricket on the rooftop. Below is a man with a big 1890s flat iron pressing some tablecloths. A shop has bakery sweets. Another has a big stack of in-the-shell roasted peanuts. All on the “sidewalk.”

A couple of kids below see me waving. Ermela takes my camera to shoot me signaling them. They wave back and start to show off.

Then that cup of tea. It has an appealing flavor that seems new to me.

I have torn a tote bag and need to re-pack it. But Martin takes it and disappears. A half hour later he returns on his motor scooter with the bag sewn up. How much did you pay the man? 10 rupees. That’s twenty-five cents? The patch doesn’t last the whole journey home, but it helped.

It’s getting toward dusk when an awful racket starts in the street. I grab my camera. Out of an alley come 6-8 guys with snare drums beating. Behind are a dozen plus women with lamps lighted (flames, no less), followed by a few dozen marchers. “What’s that about?” I ask as they fade up the street. “O they are going to the temple to worship the sun god as they think that in winter when the sun is weak you can do puja (offerings) and get the sun to smile on your life,” explains Martin.

After Ermela leaves Premji tells me she is a high caste Brahmin girl who has started coming to the house church. This type of house ministry happens by the thousands in the cities of India. Keep a low profile. Hindus make trouble if they think you are converting anyone. Smart plan.

Scene III.

Time to head out. Driving in Delhi makes one feel like you are in some kind of competition. A blend of demolition derby and dodge-ems.

Martin tells me his story. As a teen he was playing guitar in the gothic rock band. Really extreme – slouching toward Satanism, when he found Jesus. His buddies still hate him for deserting. Feeling God’s call, he went to NTC and got a theology degree. He was in my class a year or two ago.

Now Martin is Punjabi. The state of Punjab is unique in India. Some five hundred years ago the Muslims were getting heavy-handed there. One Guru Nank formed a new religion, borrowing from Islam and Hinduism. He opposed the brutal caste system and the oppressive aspects of Islam in order to create an active religion that would fight for the rights of the oppressed. Sikhs are the guys who wear that turban of folded cloth that looks sort of like a bike helmet. They have proved themselves good warriors. And—Punjab is the only state in India that is neat and clean! So Martin begins to pray about where God would place him, hopefully in Punjab.

The Lord impresses on him the verse about going with the Gospel from Jerusalem to Judea and to the ends of the earth. Great! He will start in his Jerusalem—Punjab. However, as is common for these students, he tells some faculty and asks them to pray and give their assessment of this word from the Lord. They do just that. Some days later they tell him that he is to go to India’s “Jerusalem.” That would be the place last on Martin’s list: Delhi. A very tough adjustment. But Martin goes. He is now content ministering through his house church and reaching out to orphans and the poor as well as to the well off.

He reminds me of his interest and skill in philosophy. He wants to get a masters degree therein so he can be an apologist. I decide to give him a copy of my Quest for Truth text. He is thrilled! So I give him three more copies for some of his NTC pals who also have been bitten by the gadfly of philosophy and are taking higher degrees.

We have now spent over an hour and one half dodging cars, bikes, three-wheelers, lorries, camels, and pedestrians to complete the 25 miles to the airport. It’s “Goodbye until next fall!”

Scene V

A blue uniformed young man sees me alight from the van and fetches his trolley for my book-laden bags. No line this time. So in no time I am safe in the “system” of international air transport. We leave Delhi at midnight and chase the moon west all night. 15 hours later I am flying over Chester, VT where our family has a 350 acre tree farm. We land at dawn in Newark. I call Ellie once my cell phone gets recharged. She has just returned from an early grocery run. By 11 a.m. I am in my hometown—and proudly so. The home of the 2007 World Champion Red Sox and the New England Patriots.

I thank the Lord for guiding me through all these “advenchas” and getting me safe into Ellie’s arms and into Jim Herrick’s car for the ride to Liberty Street.

The old song’s sentiment is so true. “There’s No Place Like Home, Sweet Home.” Be it ever so humble….

Praise God, I am a bit humbler now than when I left. And that’s a good thing.

Thanks for your prayers.