Doug’s World

Delhi Pictures

I got out and took a few pictures yesterday afternoon. Click on my friend’s face to the right to browse through them.

And speaking of my friend Mr. Singh (yeah, I know all Sikhs are named Singh, but he didn’t tell me any more than that and I didn’t push) … I really must vent a bit about what it’s like to be a tourist in India. For those of you who were on the email list during my trip to India in 1999, this will sound familiar. Sorry, it’s still true.

Meals at the Hotel

First, about the meals at the hotel. Consider room service. If you order up room service, they bring delicious food promptly. Great. But it comes with a young man in a suit who wants to serve it to you. And you have to push fairly hard to make him leave. He wheels in the cart, folds it open, pulls out the food from the insulated container under the tabletop, sets up silverware and little folded napkins and piles of plates (an amazing number of pieces of china for one person’s meal), and so on. Then he tries to get you to sit down so he can serve it to you. Then you tell him you’re busy, you don’t want to do that, he offers to cut up your food, no to that, he offers to pour your coffee or water, no to that … you get the idea. And it’s all I can do to not scream “LOOK AT ME, DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED HELP FEEDING MYSELF? I’VE EATEN THOUSANDS OF MEALS WITHOUT YOU LORDING OVER ME, AND I’M GOING TO EAT THIS ONE WITHOUT YOUR HELP, TOO!” But I control myself, and smile while saying “I’m quite busy today and would prefer you leave the food for me to eat at my convenience, please. Thank you!”

Then he wants to know when to come back to get the dishes. You’re not supposed to put them in the hall — no, that would be “inconvenient” for you to have to do that yourself. So you give him a time to come back (”give me an hour, OK?”) and then when the time comes some girl from the front desk calls to ask if it’s OK for him to come get the dishes. Of course, you don’t know that’s why she’s calling, because she starts the call like every call from the front desk (say, the one where they told me they were raising the room rate because apparently I hadn’t complained enough about the previous rate), with “excuse me, Mr. Moo, but I want to be sure that I’m not disturbing you right now and that this is a good time to call you, and I hope you’re enjoying your stay and will tell us of anything at all we can do to make your stay more comfortable, and …” … and the first few times I went through that routine, I politely went along for the ride, but the last time I just barked “PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT” at her. Sorry. I’m a jerk. And even then, she offered to call back and re-interrupt me some other time when I’d have more time to listen to how much she hoped I was enjoying my stay, but I decided to bite the bullet and had her send the suit for the dishes, and he was promptly there and offered to help me understand the channels on my TV, which I’ve not turned on yet after five days in this room, and I said “no thanks” and he asked if there was anything else I would like and hoped I was enjoying my stay and please let us know how we can help and so on. And I gave him 100 rupees and was extra-nice because I felt bad about yelling at the girl who called.

Man, that was sure a lot more convenient than pushing the dishes out into the hall like I do at the Holiday Inn back home.

So yesterday afternoon, an hour before meeting Mr. Singh, I decided to go eat in the restaurant. They have a buffet, so it should be a peaceful way to have a meal, right? And it started out that way. I walked through the buffet and grabbed a dozen different delicacies, everything from lentils and roti to fresh rambutan, coliander soup, and cottage cheese pancake. Good stuff.

But back at my seat at a table, the convenience of my dining experience was just beginning. I had one guy come by and offer tea or coffee, and he wanted to bring me juice as well, so badly that I relented and said “orange juice.” Then, while he was carefully pouring my tiny cup of coffee (for frequent and convenient refills, no doubt), another guy brought me a bottle of mineral water, and I said sure, and then another guy brought a basket of bread — the very same bread I had just walked past in the buffet line, mind you — and there were eight hands on my table, including my own. And I told the bread guy, while he was presenting the plate of butter with a flourish, “I’m not going to eat that, so it really seems a shame for it to go to waste,” and he grabbed up the bread and butter and scurried away like I had hit him or something. And later, just to be a jerk, I grabbed the bottle of mineral water and poured some myself, while the water man rushed to my table and explained that he’d be happy to pour my water at any time, and he too, like everyone here, hoped I was enjoying my stay.

And so it went, and when I left I was in such a hurry to get out of there and back to my usual inconvenient routine that I forgot to sign the check, but a suit chased me down at the elevator and had me sign it on a convenient little tray, and I felt bad so I gave him 100 rupees too.

Taking a Walk

Then I decided to go out for a walk. Now, I had no delusions about this. I knew that as soon as my big white head appeared on the street, I’d have a rikshaw or two shadowing me. (Remember when we tried to take walks in 1999, Mom?) But I was determined to simply walk around a bit, take some pictures at India Gate, maybe head over to the capitol building or down to Lodhi Gardens. I put on my boots, put the camera and lenses in my backpack, and strode briskly down the driveway of the Taj Mahal Hotel to Shah Jahan Road.

There was Mr. Singh, across the street, and he yelled as if he just noticed a long-lost friend. By the time I had gone 20 feet up the deserted sidewalk, he was puttering along beside me, imploring me to get in his rikshaw (or tuktuk as they often call it). But I smiled — feeling bad about how I had behaved earlier in the day, I was polite to Mr. Singh the entire two hours I spent with him — and said no, I just wanted to walk. But walk as I did, he just followed along beside me, glad to have a prospect to work on.

“No need to walk, I wil drive you to many places. You can ride in comfort!”

I explained that I needed some exercise and rubbed my stomach with a smile. He rubbed his rotund tummy and laughed, “I am needing exercise too, I am like you so come ride with me!”

I stuck to my plan, but as we talked and headed north up Man Singh Road, I heard footsteps rapidly approaching from behind me. Then suddenly a young man was walking beside me, and he smiled and said “hello, do you understand the Sikh man is wanting to help you?”

I explained that I understood, but I just wanted to walk, and he told me he was a cook from the hotel where I’m staying. I asked what me made today, and then lied and told him that the chicken curry was my favorite of everything I had for lunch just now, and then we chatted about things like his sister who lives in Chicago, and what a great mustache I have, and how my earring makes me look like a movie star, and other things people often talk about while walking up Man Singh Road. Mr. Singh followed at our side, smiling and asking for my business in countless ways.

Soon my friend the cook was explaining to me that the street ahead was quite dangerous, with many shoeshiners and pickpockets and “brown-sugar smokers,” and I thought “wow, you can buy smack on the street two blocks from the Taj Mahal Hotel?” I told him I’ve traveled many places and I don’t really worry about pickpockets, but he kept talking and told me that it would be best for me to let Mr. Singh drive me. “The Sikhs are very honest and noble, he will take good care of you and charge you very little, maybe 100 rupees for two hours.”

Rikshaw Ride

And I gave up. I thanked my friend the cook (I think his name was Rami, but he said it so fast I’m not sure), and hopped in with Mr. Singh. Then Rami helped me out by explaining to Mr. Singh that I wanted to go to India Gate and the Presidential Palace (as I had mentioned), and also the large beautiful “emporium” which he knew I would like very much. And I said “no, I have no interest in shopping, that’s not for me,” but I was already in the rikshaw and it was just a matter of time now.

We went to India Gate and the Presidential Palace and snapped some pictures. And I really liked Mr. Singh. He told me about his nephew in New York, and asked if he could come home with me, and he was laughing and smiling the whole time. He sang while driving, and I told him that back in the United States not even the most expensive limousines have live music like he has in his rikshaw, and he laughed. We were having a great time, Mr. Singh and I.

Shopping for Carpets

Then, suddenly, we were at the emporium. I told him I didn’t want to shop, he said I could just look, I said I just wanted to take pictures, he said you can take beautiful pictures in there, and again I just gave up. I trotted up the steps into the place with my camera in hand, resolved to not spend a single rupee no matter what.

Soon I was in the Kashmir carpet room, and a man was throwing carpets on the floor in the usual style. (Mom, I’m sure you remember the routine, and this was the same as all the other places we went in Varanasi or Agra or wherever.) They’re always very tidy when you come in, then the salesman throws carpets down all over the place, man-handling them as if to show off their rugged sturdiness, spinning them around with a flourish to show how the look different from different directions, and so on until the floor is covered with a mozaic of carpets.

Then, like a smoke after sex, it’s time for tea after some carpet-throwing, and you do that on a nice padded couch while a young man rolls up all the carpets and puts them away, except a few of the most expensive ones that he slides over near where you’re sitting. And the salesman gets out the book with all the addresses of where they’ve shipped carpets, to reassure you that people right in your hometown have left their money here before you, and we talk about the features and benefits of various carpets — “this one will last 700 years and this one will last only 100 years, maybe 110 years, so for two thousands dollars the other carpet is a much better bargain, your grandchildren’s grandchildren will think of you when they walk their bare feet on it” — and we look at pictures of the sweet dirt-poor families who make the carpets (”and most of the money goes to them, that is how we are different from other stores” — which is sort of cute from a guy with expensive Italian leather shoes on), and on and on and on.

Then we got into something I hadn’t anticipated. This man, this Muslim man from Kashmir who had told me stories of selling carpets in Lahore and Kabul and Baghdad, he suddenly starts talking about what a great man George Bush is. He said the amount of terrorism in Kashmir had dropped significantly, thanks to Bush’s war on terrorism. And he said that it was a great thing America did, getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and then he told stories of Saddam having dinners with 300 dishes on the table (and hell, I probably had 15 dishes on the table the last time I ordered room service so I can see where Saddam was coming from), and then a story of how Saddam used to have a pool full of naked beautiful girls to swim with. “George Bush got rid of a very bad man, I don’t think Americans understand that.”

I tried to be tactful. “Well, I think some people in America are angry that he told them Saddam had scary weapons and that’s why we had to kill all those people.”

His eyes lit up, and he grabbed the big book of shipping addresses. “Saddam, you see, he was like this book, and the whole world could not see into this book and see what was in it, but George Bush” — and here he flung the book open and dropped it to the floor with a loud thud — “he opened the book for the world to see that it was empty!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but we killed maybe half a million people to get that empty book open.”

And on and on it went, and soon we were back to the carpets. And frankly, I’ve gone on way too long here so I’ll leave out all the stuff about how he could tell which carpets Megan would like best because he felt he knew me and would know what the woman I would love would want in a carpet.

After sneaking in a couple of photos, I stood up and shook his hand firmly and told him “I have enjoyed our conversation very much” (the truth) and headed out to Mr. Singh. He was smiling and happy, but as soon as I told him I hadn’t bought anything he was a new man. Mr. Singh’s suicidally depressed cousin or something. We rode back to the hotel in silence, no live music, no laughter, not a word of small talk.

And it just drives me nuts, this whole carpet-emporium nonsense. I would gladly pay a rickshaw driver $100 to drive me around all day just taking pictures, but that’s simply not an option in my experience. I’ve told other drivers the same thing I told this guy — “please, just take me to the places I ask for photos, and I’ll pay you well, I DO NOT have any interest in shopping.” But because of his approach, the same approach used by every single rikshaw driver I’ve ever hired in India, at the end of the day we’re both disappointed. I understand the economics (think of how Americans would behave if Indian tourists came to visit with hundreds of thousands in cash in their pockets, which is a reasonably accurate analogy), and I know it’s not Mr. Singh’s fault any more than it’s the fault of young Mexican men in Cabo that taxi rides come with a free trip to a high-pressure condo sales pitch, but still. It drives me nuts.

I paid Mr. Singh 500 rupees instead of 100 rupees, and he offered a hint of that smile I had enjoyed earlier in the afternoon. Just a hint.

Anyway. Enjoy the pictures.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 4:22 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.