Indian Diary of a Worldly and Street-smart Traveler II.
Friday 12th August.
I sit on my little suitcase and for the third time I try to convince the zipper to close. It doesn’t budge. Gore-tex jacket has to go. And a few this and thats, too. Finally everything is trapped inside. Mustn’t accept any gifts or buy anything bigger than a latke, I vow. I don’t know why or where I would get latkes in India anyway.
At Schwechat, I already know there is free wi-fi at the C terminal, so I gaily fire off emails to all corners of the world about my upcoming adventures. To my surprise I find out the flight from Frankfurt to New Delhi is only 7 hours long. I expected 12 or more. Good good. Journey is exceptionally uneventful, I watch some Bollywood movie about family drama involving broken hearts of a multitude of people, random dancing in the rain, shy but very very meaningful glances of couples at each other with a hint of a possibility of a kiss – the usual. I read the training manual that I, David, and Jasmine put together for trainings in India. What on Earth am I going to teach Nagas from Nagaland and business students in Kerala? Anyway, I’ll deal with that later. My only goal is to get myself from international to domestic terminal at the airport in Delhi. Should be easy enough.
I get to Delhi shortly after midnight. Collect my little ready-to-burst suitcase (did I mention that it is little, though? I am very proud that I managed to limit myself to a tiny little suitcase) and look for some signs. No signs. Great. I ask around. What airline am I flying with? Damn. If only I could remember. The worldly and street-smart traveler forgot to print the information, as well as address and phone number for Hillel and David in Delhi. “Air India”, I offer. Puzzled looks. Air India does not fly to Kolkata. I put forth the Indian Airlines instead, just wanting to get to the domestic terminal. Well, there’s a bus going from around the corner. Merrily I proceed to the bus. I need to show my flight ticket. I don’t have it. Hillel has all the tickets and I am to meet him, David and Jasmine at the check in. I curse under my breath and kick myself in the shin again for not printing out anything. I am sent upstairs to the Indian Air office at Gate 1. I drag my suitcase, computer bag and purse upstairs. Hot and humid air mixed with dust and smoke hits me immediately. Carefully I step over tens of street people sleeping on the pavement. At the Gate 1, I am again asked for the ticket. I explain that that’s why I’m there, to get a replacement, or at least some sort of a paper certifying that I am on that flight so that I can get on that bus. No no no, I must go to gate 3. From Gate 3 I am sent to Gate 4 and from there again to Gate 1. I patiently explain again. Determined not to move unless somebody helps me I stand in front of the guard silently and produce the most pleasant and helpless smile, batting my eyelashes. After awhile, he brings some Indian Air representative. It’s simple, I should just take a pre-paid taxi from downstairs, where I came from. I curse under my breath again, smile firmly cemented on my face. Downstairs again through all the sleepers. After some time I manage to exchange some money (sounds easy, but you go try it at the Delhi airport in the middle of the night) and locate the prepaid taxi. I only spent hour and a half at the international terminal and am already on my way to the domestic terminal. Hooray. I have all the time in the world, the flight leaves at 7am.
At the domestic terminal, surprise surprise, they demand the flight ticket from me. Otherwise I cannot enter. I ask the guards whether I can stand there with them for the next five hours before my colleagues come with the tickets and practice my newly learned skill of a helpless cheerful blonde. They caucus for awhile what to do with me, and finally let me in. I have to sit where they can see me. I sit down, exhausted yet wired up, excited to find out I can get online. Not five minutes pass and I am joined by a character in a white linen suit and a hat, considerably drunk and eager to talk. Well I am a courteous young lady, so with the character I talk. It seems he has spilt at least one or two full cups of coffee on himself. I am soon to understand why. He is making rounds around the terminal, buying everyone cups of coffee and chatting them up if they aren’t able to resist him. I ain’t. During our conversation he claims he is a political science professor, journalist, jazz musician, a poet, hotel owner and Lord knows what else.
I am online, so I check him out. Mr. B., who is on the other side of the instant messenger, does some detective work too. There is indeed a Baljit Malik who is a jazz singer, there are even at least two journalists by that name, who knows. He hands me his small collection of poems about jazz. They’re not bad, either. Unfortunately later he took it back and gifted it to two Brazilians sitting across from us, whom he brought into the conversation. “We will see each other soon” he explains to me. Baljit brought me three cups of coffee within the three or four hours he shared himself with me, so I am all hyper by the time Hillel and David get to the airport. People from the café give each of us a complimentary box of coffee and a cup – Baljit must have really gone to town there. Damn. First gift. No space for a box. I force it into my computer bag. Jasmine comes, we get her through the security guards, armed up to their teeth, and off we fly to Dimapur in Nagaland.
Saturday, 13th August.
Nagaland looks very Naga-like from the plane. I know the Naga are hill people, so I expect to see hills. Hills there are. Many, everywhere. There are rice paddies on the hillsides, not much else. When we land, we are surprised to see about 50 soldiers guarding the clearing around the one and only short runway with automatic rifles pointed into the fields. Naga are tribal people and there was a lot of violent history among themselves as well as between them and the Indian army, but is it that bad? Wearily we proceed to a terminal that’s even smaller than Bratislava’s (there should be a competition for the world’s smallest airport in any given capital city). Our friends are waiting for us, even though we are some two or three hours late. After we fill out a half a meter tall stack of paperwork to accompany out restricted area permits for the Naga government, Indian government, Naga intelligence services, Indian intelligence services and who knows who else, we are loaded into jeeps and off we go to the hotel. Nagaland looks very much like Nepal or Tibet to me. Not that I’ve ever been Nepal or Tibet, but that’s what I imagine Nepal and Tibet looking like. People here are Mongolic, they don’t look like Indians at all.
After what seems like weeks of traveling without sleep we check into our rooms. Our ‘deluxe suits’ are quite simple, rather run down rooms with bare floors. I meet a new friend in the bathroom – a big bug, size of a five year old child’s fist, with long antennas and a quizzical look. He likes to camp between the sink and the bathtub. We learned to tolerate each other’s presence, though after a day or two my friend started to claim the center of the bathroom and when the light bulb blew and my only source of light was from the room, I had to pay extra attention to his whereabouts.
TV in Nagaland has every channel you can think of. I fall asleep to the American Chopper episode, which I thought was a quite bizarre experience. Who’d ever thunk one could (or ever would) watch such things in a land of head hunters and giant cockroaches…
Sunday 14th August
Today we start the training. Bright and early, for nine or ten hours almost straight. Luckily we have everything more or less set up, with plenty of exercises and role plays. Nagas are very reflective people. Deeply spiritual, even though they are way too humble to admit it. Training goes well, though we have not taken the Independence Day into account. Dumb of us. Perhaps it wasn’t the best of ideas to come during the Naga Independence Day (albeit unsuccessful independence, celebrated today) and Indian Independence Day, celebrated tomorrow. Something always goes wrong on independence days. Things blow up, people protest and clash, traffic halts and life is generally annoying.
We retire to our deluxe chambers early, to keep company to our insect friends. I have a deadline for and article for SFPA, actually due days ago. Impact of G8 on Africa. I’m not sure if I know more about that then I do about Nagaland, but such is life. Tough… I watch Seinfeld and Friends – since they are on TV. It would be rude not to… I shall get back to G8 and other villains tomorrow.
Monday, 15th August
Nagaland is a dry state. Theoretically. Practically it doesn’t look any different than your typical Slovak village on any given day. Corridors in the hotel smell of beer, men stagger around with red watery eyes blabbering something paranoid. Those that are not drunk, are high. Nagaland is directly on the Silk Road, connecting India to China. Very strategic position. Especially for smuggling of drugs, arms, and prostitutes. Heroin can be exchanged here for a kilogram of salt (which is rare and in demand) and is of the purest quality. Many young people are addicted. AIDS has become the problem #1. In fact, at least one of our participants, is a former addict. Now he works with youth at the Baptist Church.
Nagas are deeply spiritual and religious. Former head hunters, they have captured their first missionaries and essentially forced them to educate the Nagas. Self-imposed conversion. The Baptist missionaries have ventured into the neighboring Manipur (or Mizoram?) in the 19th century. They were scared of the head hunters from Naga hills and did their best to stay out of their way. Once they were spotted by the Nagas though, they were done. Nagas were convinced that those white people are gods – as one of the Naga fables recounts that such deity will descend to Earth to uplift the Naga people – and naturally abducted them to teach their children. Quite an inventive approach towards shortage of teachers problem. Soon enough the Baptist Church was everywhere in Nagaland. Today over 90% of the Naga are Baptist. Christian religion is strangely close to the old Naga tales – you will find stories about a tower very much like Babel, that lead to the fragmentation of Naga people into tribes with different languages, or a story about the flood which only one ship with the Naga people survived… Bible was a hit, actually still is.
I have time to sit and ponder all of this, because our participants are late today. The public transportation is out of business for today. It’s a security measure. Nagas don’t like the Indian Independence day, which is the day when they were forced into the Indian Union against their will. Things are messy within India itself. A bomb blast here, a riot there, five people’s throats slashed over elsewhere… We just have to hope nobody will think of kidnapping us silly Westerners in order to make some sort of a statement against India today. Mental note: never come to Nagaland during the Independence Day again. Finally we assemble and start another training marathon, until late in the evening. I’m not sure how much are our trainees getting out of it, as we stuff concept upon concept into them. Debates are good though.
In the evening, we are taken to meet with an army general who had his back and legs broken in 1980s with a rifle butt. Nagaland was in war with India for over 50 years. Now he’s trying to negotiate peace with India. Unfortunately the Naga demands include a condition of including what they consider Naga territories into the future semi-independent or autonomous Nagaland (whatever the arrangement with India will be). That would leave the neighboring Manipur with some 10% of their current territory, and carve significant chunks out of other four neighboring states.
For dinner we are taken to one of our trainees’ house. Her tribe is from an area close to Bangladeshi border. A group of Chiung men came to sing us their songs. They’re all decked out in their traditional black and red costumes with white sea shells. Those are interesting, since Nagaland is perfectly landlocked. There are theories that Naga are actually related to people from Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. They ventured towards Nagaland overseas, camping on the ocean side for a few centuries before they moved inland in the first few centuries AD. That would make sense, Papuans are former head hunters, too. Even their languages are said to be related.
Singing is very interesting. Melodic, with deep harmonies. Every now and then someone yelps or hollers some sort of a warrior cry, startling the living daylights out of me. We eat traditional Naga food, which involves lots of rice and meat. Less spicy than Indian food, more of a comfort food.
I can see how saturated the next two weeks will be. Must brace for it. Tomorrow we head into Kohima – city up in the mountains. We are pretending to be tourists, for our entry permit is for tourism. Somebody ‘cleaned’ my room. That means somebody invaded my private space and wreaked havoc within my orderly mess. Every little last sock is folded, everything I had out is neatly stuffed into somewhere. Where it doesn’t belong. Arrrgh. I pack my little suitcase again, mier nich dir nicht this time (no pretense of any design to my packing) and close it purely due to my resolve and faith and hope that I didn’t pack my cockroach friend or any lizard into it. I vow to be more orderly and keep my suitcase closed.
