From Delhi to Dung Cakes to Dehradun

Ah! Delhi at last! A smooth swift flight, aided by 120-150 mile tail winds.
Indira Ghandi terminal is shiny with newness since my first arrival some years ago. Whisked through customs with all my bags in possession. Yes – quite a contrast with Continental that got my bags to me 3 days after I had been at the college last year, washing underwear every day.
At the end of the ramp where dozens of tour leaders and hotel go-fers hold signs with names of travellers. I know my man—John Varghese.
But he is not there. Probably stuck in traffic, even though it is 11 PM Delhi roads are busy 24/7.
Then the mind begins to embroider on the delay. Did I tell him the right day of my arrival? The correct flight number?
Suddenly I realize what a dunce I am. I am not the ugly American. But I am in the running for the most naïf American. I have no phone number. I have no address of the Delhi office. I have no address of the college 200 miles north. In short, I am informationally naked in a country of a billion souls. I’ll have to sit in this terminal forever, possibly. This is the time when even an atheist begins to pray, think I.
Do you recall how long 20 minutes can be at a time like this? Other parties meet their hosts. The hall is mostly empty. What have I done?
But as I am thus justly berating myself, the big smile of the young Varghese gleams in the distance. “So sorry! Have you been waiting long? We got into traffic.”
John, needing to meet Uncle George (founder of New Theological College) at 1 AM, hands me off to Premji. We disappear into the perpetual haze of Delhi. You can see a mile or so but as through a dry smoggy mist.
Speed bumps are doubled here on some highways. You have to stop and crawl. And some potholes stop us also – which is something when you are driving with the horn, changing lanes (3 cars/lorries abreast on a two lane road), and coming within 6 inches of the rear cheek of the car ahead. It’s like those scary amusement park rides only there are no safety controls under the surface. 35 mph feels like 70.
A new wrinkle since last time as Delhi seeks to improve its safety records. In places tiny yellow lights flash on either edge of the highway. They are randomly timed. So it looks like the lights on little kids sneakers—or perhaps like those tiny blinking light on Christmas trees. But what good is that when trucks and cars and cycles (both motor and pedaled) are honking their way through the hazy maze? One Vespa shoots by—no lights at all. A grey ghost snaking down the highway. Thankfully the guy on the back is wearing a whitish shirt. Sort of grey, actually, like everything else.
Since Uncle is coming I am taken to the Southern Hotel. I understand nothing of the conversation Premji is carrying on at the desk. Soon my bags are picked up and we go into a minivan. Thank God Premji is going too. Off down dingy streets with little pavement, many dogs, and a few sacred cows. We stop at a small lighted sign on a sad-looking building. “Perfect Hotel,” it says. How can these guys lie so brazenly? I sign in, ask for a 5:30 wakeup call, go up a teeny tiny elevator. The man opens the door.
Viola! A small but immaculate tiled floor room and bath. Thanks be to God. With only 4 hours until the wakeup call, I’m off to dreamland and a surprisingly decent sleep, given that my circadian rhythms make it mid-afternoon. The time is 10.5 hours ahead of EST
At 6:15 the boys are back for me. John loans me 1000 rupees against the 1650 charge. I have no clue how much that is in US$. Uncle George is in the van and we are soon on the Shadabti train north. Keep a sharp eye on the luggage on the overhead rack—thieves.
At last I relax, sort of. The sugar fields and dung-cake lots speed by. Every seat is filled, Thankfully I am in a window seat. Hot tea and a biscuit will be followed by a small egg omelet, white bread and jam.
Life is good!
P.S. “Dung-cakes?” You ask. Here’s a lesson for you home-schooling parents. In India cows are sacred. They wander at will, even in huge cities. You best not kill one—even by accident. You would be accused of more than being a party-pooper. You could be fined for such offence against the sacred—if a Hindu mob didn’t kill you first. (This has happened!) Hence lots of raw material for a cottage industry. The end product of their grazing is dumped liberally along rail and roadsides. Low caste people (including women and kids of every age) dig clumps from the steaming piles and shape by hand cakes that look like a thick Aunt Jemimah buckwheat pancake. Left in the sun to dry, the baked goods are then stacked on end against each other to form circles of dung cakes. The piles spiral up as volume increases until you can have bee-hives several feet high or platform squares with several hundreds of this commodity. The market is always brisk for this low-cost fuel that the poor use to cook their rice. With globalization we may yet see these on pallets at Walmart and Home Depot. Whaddya bet?