Feeling small in mighty India

Claustrophobia is something I have never felt before in my life - except here in India. But it is not a claustrophobia borne of enclosed spaces but rather of crowds. Kolkata, with a population of 20 million, has three times as many people in it as London. Its human scale is therefore something you can’t possibly imagine until you step onto its streets and mingle with its denizens. For on Kolkata’s streets, there is the real danger of you being swept away by the deluge; the river of Indians that flows along the pavements, through the alleys, spilling onto the roads, flowing between the traffic, swamping the old city and threatening to drown you in its eddies.

So many people!
So many bouncing heads!
So many human organisms!

And each of these bouncing heads is an individual bundle of senses and nerves and flesh (just like you) but unlike you they appear like ants; following pre-programmed life trajectories. They are like drones from the same factory line: with the same replica dress, replica manner and replica speech. The same model number too: #Indus Generalus. Not a single one of them (you notice) stops for a second to look around; to marvel, to think and to ponder the world swirling about them. Their sameness makes the crowd appear even more pronounced, even more threatening and inexplicable.

And the human river never stops. It never dries out! It is relentless. And nor is it limited to street level. Look up for a second and you’ll see the human river ten feet up: Indians on balconies. You’ll see Indians on rooftops. On tops of buses; hanging from doors and door frames; clinging from every surface like spiders. Every handle has an Indian clinging onto it. Every seat is sat on. Every patch of precious shade occupied. Every restaurant has a queue. Every train has a waiting list. Every internal flight booked. Travel in a train and you'll notice no space is left empty: behind boxes you’ll spot them, sleeping in overhead luggage racks, curled underneath your seat, hanging outside of windows, under the bogeys. It’s a crowded world and here in India, where space is precious and where you pay a premium for it, it’s so easy to get lost amongst the crowd and it scares me. If I was to disappear here would anybody notice I wonder? A blip on the radar or an atom amongst many? I fear being drowned out in this mob. I am choking! I am suffocating! I want out! So to escape from the crowds I hide in my room and shut the windows (to shut out the noise) and I attempt to recover a sense of being an individual. For amongst the crowds individuality is lost. For India is one big crowd:

'Everyone needs a place they can hide
Hide away find space to be alone
Everyone needs a place they can hide
Everyone needs to find peace sublime'
('Small' - Queen + Paul Rodgers)

But there is relief. For the majority of the crowd escape is impossible. But for me it is a real possibility: I have a passport. I have money. I have knowledge of the world. So all I have to do is purchase an aeroplane ticket to someplace else. Someplace where the crowds are not so viscous and then I will be free! For a moment I am tempted by a fantasy to escape from India and flee to the Seychelles - where I am told they have never heard of crowds. But that would be like giving up on India. I am not a quitter. So instead of the Seychelles I settle for Darjeeling instead!

Oh! Quaint Darjeeling, that sits perched on the Himalayan foothills surrounded by gentle hills. Hills so gentle as if carved by the Gods not in a fit of apoplectic rage, like Pakistan's Karakorams, but in a state of profound torpor. Hills that, in the evening twilight, look like sheets of rippled satin. But this stunning scenery is not what Darjeeling is famous for. No, it is tea. The tea grows in stubbly clogs that cling to terraced fields cut into the hills. In the morning mist it is a dreamlike world to behold! Where clouds skitter across the tea plantations; snagging and tearing there bodies in the tea leaves, their bulbous bellies dripping with rain and through the fissures you can see the ghostly outline of the tea pickers; bent double with their wicker baskets bundled to their backs. As the engorged sun rises it sends the remaining clouds up in puffs of steam leaving behind an air that is glassy and a light that is clear. It is cold here too; the coldest I have felt since leaving England.

The faces of Darjeeling are not typically Indian either. But then, in a country as vast as India, what is typically Indian anyway? Gone are the beaky noses, dark skins, gangly limbs and mustachios of West Bengal. In are the fair complexions and the oriental countenance of the Nepalese. The women have that beguiling mix of Indian and Nepalese features and when they speak Hindi, it is a pleasure to watch them - to watch those Hindi words spout out of their lips. The music they listen to and sing to in cafes is Indian too. Nepalese looking women singing old Indian songs! This is one of the many beauties of India. It’s such a vast and magical place that the mind fails to appreciate its richness.

But for now I am safe here in Darjeeling. Safe from the crowds. Safe from the alm seekers and the importuning hands. But safe for how long I wonder? Next stop Delhi (crowd central!) and Agra. Agra - the home of the Taj Mahal: is there any more bewitching symbol of a man’s love for a woman?

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'Small' - (Queen + Paul Rodgers)



I like to sit here in the sunshine
Trees in the fields are green sublime
Suspended in time
And dawn it make you feel small

I like to sit here by the fire's light
The trees in the fields lie bed to the night
The stars burn bright
And dawn it make you feel small

Everyone needs a place they can hide
Hide away find space to be alone
Everyone needs a place they can hide
Every one needs to find peace sublime