"But the board..."
"Platform 9," he snaps. The conversation is evidently at an end.
As it has the popular vote, I walk to Platform 9, where a train to Amritsar sits smugly unconcerned by curt officials or notice boards. I head back to the main hall hoping to find my official, but he has conveniently disappeared without trace. I approach another official, who smiles broadly. "Platform 12, sir. Udaipur train is departing from Platform 12".
"But the other man told me..."
"Please sir, I am absolutely assuring you that the Udaipur train is departing Platform 12."
The niners and twelvers neck-and-neck, I visit Platform 12, which gives me a curious impression that it has seen many things in the course of a useful life, but if there is one thing that it considers beyond the call of duty, it is having to play host to an Udaipur train. I hasten back to the main hall again and scan the assembled company wildly for any sign of either of my officials. I run again to Platform 9, time starting to run with me, and am forced to curse Amritsar and Ahmedabad and all cities that begin with an A. I dash over to the departure board, performing an intricate slalom round scurrying porters and motionless groups of voluminous, sari-clad aunties. "Don't panic!" I tell myself, feigning absolute confidence that in five minutes time I shall sink back into my seat, laughing at India's chaotic charm. The departure board story is unchanged, and I begin a final despairing assault on Platform 12. But here comes my coup de grace: a ministering angel disguised as an office worker. "You are going to Udaipur?" he asks with a smile. "Actually, your Adi Udz train is there on Platform 7."
"But... I mean..."
"Some complications are there, actually, but please you go now or you will be missing your train."
I thank him from the depths of my thumping heart, and race to Platform 7. And there it is, my beautiful, elusive Adi Udz sleeper train, bound for Udaipur. I hurtle down to the correct coach, miraculously easy to find, and there on the passenger list pasted to the outside of the train is my name - how implausible! how inconceivable! - next to seat 48. I clamber in, and after a brief excursion to the wrong seat I locate 48 - mine! - and sink back into it, sweating profusely but smiling at India's charming chaos.
Udaipur
Why am I here anyway? The official explanation is that I am going to volunteer for five months in Bharti Vikas Samiti, the “Indian Development Association”, an Indian-run Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) with a strong focus on rural development. The ulterior motive is to chase a dream. My dream is what is politely referred to as a vocation, although the call has been a long time coming. When I was a child I wanted to be a geographer because I thought this consisted mainly of learning the capital cities of other countries. At thirteen I wanted to be a scientist. Come fifteen I wanted to be a doctor and by the time I was seventeen I wanted to be a scientist again. Now at 22 I have put away childish things and come to a conclusion of infantile simplicity: I want to work in far-off places. Careers Advisor convention is to diagnose this as an aspiration to work in the field of International Development, and to caution sufferers not to set their hopes too high but to be resourceful, and if possible to acquire an angle. I have not yet acquired mine, although I suspect it has something to do with villages. Neither am I under any illusion that I have been particularly resourceful so far, but tonight I feel I have achieved something: I am here!
Luckily, I am already in love with India. This began three years ago on a visit to the deep Tamil south. There I lived with Brahmins and taught English to schoolchildren and generally had all the kinds of experiences that are becoming almost customary for a certain class of English eighteen-year old. No, not quite all - I didn't smoke ganja or grow a beard, and to my enduring shame I did not even have sex on a Goan beach, an omission so comprehensive that it extended to failing to visit Goa at all. In fact, I tended to shun the gap year crowd altogether, preferring the company of Indian friends who took me some way into their world, planting the seeds of an attraction that has grown with time into the monstrous obsession of today.
My first day in Udaipur has unravelled with a few unexpected twists. I arrived at Bharti Vikas Samiti at nine this morning and was shown to my guesthouse within the NGO compound by a gruff security guard. Upstairs the door to the bedroom was locked so the guard knocked and rattled on it with unnecessary violence until a young man unlocked it from the inside. He was the first unexpected twist: he was white. He was white and I resented him for it. In all my mental images of Bharti Vikas Samiti's volunteer community, one underlying assumption seemed so obvious that I never thought to question it: the volunteers would be Indian. I was going to work in far-off places and I naturally expected to work with far-off people. Thinking back, this assumption was not simply naive but flew in the face of the very mechanism that brought me here in the first place - a careers fair in Cambridge! Unaware of the inner unrest he had unleashed, the young man let me in and the security guard indicated my bed. This perfectly ordinary piece of furniture prompted a new wave of silent turmoil as it dawned on me that I would be sleeping on it for five months. In the claustrophobia of the guest room, five months suddenly seemed like a very long time indeed.
A lengthy bucket shower and a change of clothes restored my balance enough to make a foray into the poky little kitchen where I met another volunteer, Ellen. Had she gone out her way to demonstrate the world’s smallness she could not have done a better job. She was not only in my year at Cambridge but also has connections with Devon, my home county. We have already established a number of mutual friends and ascertained that I have met her boyfriend, ironically a fellow gap year volunteer in South India three years ago. Despite her distinctly firangi[1] origins, it is wonderfully reassuring to know she will be here for most of my stay. She told me that the majority of the volunteers in Vikas Samiti (the Bharti, I understand, is usually omitted) are European or North American and, on cue, in came Anna, Rachel and Melissa. About them, more anon, but I shall say nothing more of Our Young Man of the Bedroom Door as he is leaving tomorrow and, amiable though he is, I have no reason to suspect our paths will cross again.
The girls made me some breakfast which we ate on the guesthouse roof with a glorious view of the neighborhood - a large building site surrounded by unfamiliar trees lining a dusty road. All round are concrete cubes, typical of modern Indian residential architecture, and to the east are the Aravallis, a highly angular formation of green hills that look like they are on the cusp of turning brown. Despite Anna's assurances that I would be lucky if I managed to get a project off the ground in under a week, I felt optimistic as I set off to track down Kavita, the volunteer co-ordinator. Given that I had already been corresponding with her over the summer about a potential project, and that she had put me in touch with a potential supervisor, I felt entitled to a degree of hope that things could be set into motion swiftly. Fifteen minutes of searching in the white-washed building that serves as Vikas Samiti's nerve centre revealed Kavita to be in a meeting and unavailable, and it was only two hours later that I managed to corner her as the meeting room exuded its tired-looking contents. After a perfunctory greeting she effected my introduction in brisk, almost American tones - forms to fill, a library to register with and expectations to lower. She was insistent on this last point - just because I had already been corresponding with a member of the Natural Resource Department (NRD), it didn't mean that I could simply wander off into the field. Kavita's boss, Sumita Ahuja would need to sift through my credentials to ascertain whether I could be more effectively deployed in another department. This is inviolable protocol. Since today is Saturday, and neither Sumita nor my ray of hope from NRD, Dilip Mishra, will be in until Monday, I have drawn a blank on achieving anything further until the day after tomorrow.
*
Leaving Kavita, the most logical thing to do was to indulge my desire to explore the neighbourhood. Vikas Samiti is split between two compounds, one containing the guesthouse, library and education department, the second housing all other departments and the meeting room. They straddle a long straight road, mostly lined with similar compounds - heavy, light-coloured cubes, swaddled in dusty greenery on yellow grass - and mostly devoid of human interest in the afternoon heat. This tranquil stretch runs parallel to a much busier road that seems to form the centre of Fatehpura, the north Udaipur suburb that today has become my home. On my stroll I seemed to take everything and nothing in - the rumbling, hooting, jeering, gossiping panoply of sounds that characterises urban India. Women in bright saris, men in duller whites, blues and greys. Are the faces lighter than those I saw in the south? Are blue-green eyes more prevalent? I think so, but I cannot yet distinguish my experience from my expectations.
Beyond all expectation was this evening's entertainment. I went with the four girls to a celebration at the City Palace[2], seat of Udaipur's royal family. This was part of Navratri, the Hindu festival of nine nights which culminates in Dussehra, the commemoration of Lord Rama’s[3] slaying of the demon Ravana as related in the Ramayana epic. We sat sipping beer on a picnic table by Lake Pichola, Udaipur's trump card, gazing out to the Lake Palace, Maharana Jagat Singh's other-worldly creation, floodlit and seemingly floating in the air above the lake. Later we danced the garba, the famous North Indian stick dance, on a lawn full of beautiful ladies in jewelled saris and handsome Rajput men in traditional kurta pyjama and turbans. The setting was desperately romantic and filled me with the utter thrill of being in Rajasthan, the most unashamedly exotic state in India. The thrill still lingers as I write this in the musty guest room, on a grubby bed under a buzzing strip light and a clanking ceiling fan. I am glad to be here.
Footnotes
[1] Firangi (and variants) is used in India and Southeast Asia to denote foreigners. It is of Persian origins and is believed to have ultimately originated from an Arabic word for the Franks, the Germanic tribe who have given their name to France. The same word has become Farang in Thailand, Falang in Laos and Ferenji in Ethiopia.
[2] The palace was built by Maharana Udai Singh, at the time of Udaipur’s foundation in the 16th Century, but was extended by numerous later Maharanas (rulers) of Mewar (the region of which Udaipur became the capital). It is still the seat of the entirely symbolic current Maharana’s family.
[3] Rama is an extremely important and popular avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, the preserver god. His story is told in the Ramayana, one of Hinduism’s best-loved epics.
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