Kaziranga
The duration of my bumpy low-altitude flight down from Paro in Bhutan to Guwahati in India was only 25 minutes. But the contrast between the country I had left and the one I was entering was stark. Gone was the clean silence of Bhutan and the cool serenity of the mountains, replaced by the dirty chaos of India and the sticky humidity of the Brahmaputra valley.
It's a good thing I'm an Indophile. It's impossible to have mixed feelings about the country; you either love it or hate it. Indeed dichotomy is at its heart - Hindu and Muslim, rich and poor, past and future, youth and old age, urban and rural, east and west, tradition and technology. Whole books have been written on all of these themes. It's this diversity, and the unity that somehow manages to transcend it, that fascinates me.
I could only speak a little of just one of the eighteen official languages. So to compensate I had been practising the universal Indian head waggle. This is an essential skill to master in order to negotiate the country effectively. Highly versatile, in different situations it can signify: hello; goodbye; OK; yes; no; please; maybe; definitely; later; immediately; too expensive; what a bargain; I don't care, and so on. The nuances of the waggle are subtly conveyed by the eyes and the eyebrows.
So as I elbowed my way to the front of the immigration line and waggled furiously at the clerk, I was getting excited at the prospect of a long journey taking me right across the north of the country from the lush jungle of Assam through the dusty plateaus of Madhya Pradesh to the encircling mountains of Kashmir. Unlike in Bhutan I could go wherever I wanted at my own pace, and make all my own choices, for better or worse. On the other hand, it would be hot. Astonishingly, relentlessly, sleeplessly hot.
My prearranged driver was waiting outside Guwahati airport and with a big red smile he loaded up the cab. After an hour we finally found a functioning ATM. Stocked with wads of rupees I began a seven-hour 250km drive eastwards along the Brahmaputra to Kaziranga National Park - home to several thousand wild one-horned rhinos which, in a rare success for the Indian Parks Service, have been successfully nurtured from the verge of extinction.
***
We stopped on the dusty outskirts of Guwahati in a tiny dhaba, or roadside truckstop, for my first taste of proper Indian food in three years. I had been dreaming of this moment. It was the food that prompted my first trip to India in 2004; since then, all of my attempts to replicate the local dishes at home have been palatable to various degrees, but very few have actually tasted authentic. So when the modest thali of spicy dhal and watery aloo gobhi was served up I attacked it like a starving convict until my fingers and chin ran with turmeric butter.
Indian roads are in a permanent state of semi-construction. Traditionally, a road is built from the beginning to the end, or perhaps from both ends to meet in the middle. This is not the case in India, where the construction contracts seem to have been awarded to different groups every ten kilometres. These teams appear to work at their own leisurely pace, none communicating with any other - nor with the bridge-building guys. Another example of the functional chaos that is dragging India into a semblance of modernity.
The resulting journey would have been be comical if it wasn't so uncomfortable. Bursts of manic speed along newly tarmaced stretches of motorway were followed by twenty minutes' bumpy crawl along a dusty side road, and then back onto the opposite semi-complete lane for another 140kph burst. Traffic hurtled in both directions on a collision course, lights flashing and horns blaring, only swerving to one side at the very last second. Trucks overtook trucks that were already overtaking other trucks. I loved it. I think I was high on the danger.
The trip was also broken by several chai stops at rural towns in which I rapidly attracted flotillas of gaping children. Midway we left the motorway and waited at a railway crossing as an endless cargo train trundled lazily past. There must have been two hundred bogeys. A heady aroma of jungle and woodsmoke filled the air as we drank coconut milk and watched the wallah hack apart the nut expertly and carve out the delicious flesh with a giant machete.
***
It was getting dark when we finally approached Kaziranga, and it was hard to read the safety warnings painted on rocks by the side of the road. 'Be Mr Late Not Late Mr'. 'If You Are Married, Divorce Speed'. 'Be A Careful Overtaker Or You Will Meet The Undertaker'. These well-intentioned signs seemed pitifully ineffective as we took the blind turns at terrifying speed, and it was easy to believe that 250 lives are claimed on Indian roads every single day.
I had hoped to stay at the Assam State Tourism lodges, but they were full, so I ended up at the grandly-named Kaziranga Wildlife Sanctuary. Apparently this was the first guesthouse at the park, established in 1973, but if so it hasn't been modernised since. The grubby room crawled with bugs and there was no shower, but the mosquito net functioned well once I had stitched up all the holes, and in the crushing humidity it was pleasant to douse myself from a bucket of cold water. For Rs250, or 4 euro, a night, I couldn't really complain.
After the endless sweaty drive I was looking forward to a cold beer. Off-licences in India are charmingly called 'English Wine Shops' or 'Imported Wine Shops' and are banished to the outskirts of town. This naming convention persists despite the facts that (a) the English didn't introduce wine to India (it was the Persians); (b) England produces no wine; (c) there is in fact no wine for sale; indeed at any location in rural India there isn't a bottle of wine within an ass's roar, and (d) all of the available rot-gut beverages are produced locally and consumed largely by locals.
The seeming intention is to emphasise that boozing is a foreign vice and that treasonous Indians who indulge should feel extreme guilt and penitence. Nonetheless the shops are always heaving with customers to such an extent that on several occasions I foiled a would-be pickpocket while waiting to be served.
At Kaziranga I was disappointed to discover that wine shop was closed because the state elections began the following day. Ostensibly this is to ensure maximum turnout, but in reality it's to deter the unrest and violence which often accompanies the election process.
The day before I arrived, my taxi driver told me, the local Communist/Naxalite strongman had been arrested nearby amid ugly scenes, and the road had been closed for several hours. And the following day, he continued, opening the driver's door at high speed to spit paan on the road, virtually every public vehicle and taxi was requisitioned for election work. So I was lucky to travel that day.
These crackdowns are noble in their intent to facilitate the exercise of franchise, but are infuriating to thirsty travellers. They're also somewhat hypocritical given the laughably transparent corruption and downright criminality of many Indian elected representatives.
Some entered politics to evade serious criminal charges including murder. Others have amassed enormous fortunes far beyond the means of their government salary; when questioned, with a straight face they attribute this wealth to 'gifts' sent by their destitute constituents. At election time these politicians' heavily armed goondas, or thugs, drive through poor villages throwing wads of cash from their jeeps, pausing occasionally to club supporters of opposing parties to death.
***
The park tourist complex was set back from the main road in the middle of a huge tea plantation. In the dead silence of a moonless night the aromatic bushes stood silhouetted by starlight, swarming with fireflies flickering on and off in ghostly waves. I had never seen fireflies before. It was as if the stars had fallen to earth and were dancing amid the trees. Or at least this was how it might have seemed had I had a couple of beers. Even distressingly sober it was still a magical sight.
On returning to my hotel I found a cadaverous young Swede with a wispy beard sitting on the veranda smoking a pipe. His companion was a rich and arrogant Californian girl dressed like a belly-dancer. I sat with them for a while until the tangents of their conversation became unbearable, then retreated to my room and lay watching the fireflies bat against the mosquito netting until I slept. The next morning we all rose at 5am and shared the cost of an elephant safari. India at dawn has a particular serenity and sense of expectant promise that's entirely absent from India at noon.
We mounted our elephant at the foreign tourists' enclave; the Indian tourists depart from elsewhere, and pay a fraction of the cost. Dual pricing is universal in India and is one of my pet peeves. The daily park entrance fee was Rs250; to bring my camera was Rs500. Our elephant ride was Rs750 per person; the jeep safaris, even shared with three others, were Rs600 each. Other irritating fees included Rs150 for an armed guard and Rs100 for road tax.
Assuming three safaris per day, the total cost for a foreigner is almost Rs3000, or 50 euro. Locals pay about one fifth of this amount. There's no way that (the largely young, backpacking) foreigners are five times richer than the plump Indian tourists who visit national parks in air-conditioned vehicles and, infuriatingly, make calls on their BlackBerrys while on elephant-back. And even if they were, there's no fair reason why they should pay so much more. But there was no choice.
***
We hadn't gone fifty metres on our loping elephant before we came upon a muddy pool containing two young male rhinos who twitched their feline ears and peered at us with tiny bright eyes. Soon they struggled to their feet, snorted and sniffed the air, and then emerged from the pool to reveal three-foot-long erections that caused uproar among the Indian tourists. Two-horned rhino, oh, ha! ha! Unperturbed the rhinos stretched and yawned and sauntered off into the grass. "Wino is going to the bathroom" our mahout said and, sure enough, after a while we encountered a huge patch of steaming droppings frequented by the local population. Walnut-brained but toilet-trained.
Later we saw many other placid winos who allowed us to come very close. They really are impressive animals, with their massive cylindrical bodies clad in folds of prehistoric armour plating and supported by surprisingly dainty legs. Like most previously unexperienced creatures, they are considerably larger than one imagines; the biggest bull we saw was almost as large as an elephant, must have weighed easily a thousand kilos, and had a razor-sharp horn over thirty centimetres in length.
We also saw some nursing mothers with absurdly cute and curious baby rhinos; elegant deer with enormous furry antlers; some slug-like wild boar; flocks of giant storks, and several herds of wild elephant. No glimpse of a tiger, despite fresh pug marks in the mud.
Our ride came to an end after a couple of hours. If you've ever ridden an elephant you'll know that this is quite enough time. With their wide backs it's tough on the human groin ligaments, and their bristly hair is like sandpaper on bare legs. Each of their frequent farts could inflate a child's bouncing castle. They also have huge smelly rubbery heads, periodically smashed by the mahouts with an iron bar whenever the elephant pauses to graze. This usually elicits a vocal complaint. Sitting astride a trumpeting elephant is a memorable experience.
***
Two additional outings by jeep later that day yielded multiple sightings of fat German tourists in safari suits sweating under the weight of zoom lenses so enormous they had their own handles (as did their owners). Still no tigers. Next morning, the Swede and his boss having left, I befriended two American couples for my final safari and we bumped along the sandy tracks exchanging the usual Western details, which always seem so disjointed and meaningless when travelling. One's background. One's career. One's post-travelling plan.
In deep jungle by a lazy river we passed another jeep with engine trouble, and stopped up the road while our guard and driver went back to assist. I got out and was stretching my legs beside the jeep when a large rhinocerous emerged onto the road from the trees ahead. Pleased, I raised my camera to 'click some snaps' as they charmingly say in India. But before I could hit the button the rhino sniffed the air, made a sound I had never heard before, lowered its horn and began to charge.
This was an interesting experience. Frozen to the spot, the image of the giant beast hurtling towards me was unforgettably etched into my mind in a moment of otherwise complete mental vacuity. As terror struck the Americans and I began screaming like schoolgirls. I scrambled back into the scant protection of the jeep which the rhino could have flipped like a playing card. Afterwards I discovered a large bump on my head where I had smashed it against the rollbar in my panic.
In the space of a few seconds the moment concluded. The Indians bellowed. Our driver came running back clapping his hands. The teenage guard fumbled with his rifle; later we learned it was loaded with blanks. At the very last moment, less than three metres away from me, the rhino got startled, heaved back throwing up a cloud of dust, and crashed off into the jungle. We were all a little jelly-legged for a while.
***
Tezpur
I had intended to stay several more days at the national park but the cost of the safaris was prohibitive. I chose not to submit to a seven-hour bus journey back to Guwahati, and instead broke the trip half-way at the town of Tezpur. So I sat by the deserted roadside at Kaziranga waiting for my bus, which when it turned up was packed. It has always amused and occasionally frustrated me no matter how rural and sparsely populated it might seem, every Indian bus and train is always absolutely jammed.
So it was with this journey. After slipping Rs20 to the skinny boy who tied my pack to the roof, I swayed in the aisle for two hours while the bus hurtled along blaring its earsplitting three-tone air horn. When I finally bagged a seat it was so narrow and uncomfortable that I wished I had remained standing. But at least it removed me from the centre of attention. The other passengers had been staring at me slack-jawed, as if expecting me to hold my nose and make rupees blow out my ears.
It became very hot. As the bus slowed children appeared from nowhere and ran alongside selling small plastic bags of water to the sweltering travellers. We crossed a long bridge over the Brahmaputra. Later I read that a truck had crashed off it the same day and sunk with the loss of many lives.
Approaching Tezpur the view changed as normal when entering an Indian town. First the roadside became strewn with trash and an almost tangible smell of sewage assaulted the nostrils. There followed several kilometres of empty enclosures with advertisements for underwear and cement painted on concrete walls. Then factories and warehouses. Then some slums of bamboo shacks. And finally the town proper.
At the bus station a nice young student of forestry management adopted me and insisted on seeing me checked in to a cheap hotel. The first place we tried offered a nightly rate of Rs2700, over 40 euro, so we left and found a cupboard room in a nearby flophouse for a tenth of the price.
This was what might be expected. The dark room was only slightly larger than the bed, but it was clean and there was a hot shower, a Western toilet and even a TV. All you get for the extra money is a bit more space, a window, a towel, a bar of soap and some toilet paper; since these three were in my backpack, why pay more?
Tezpur is a bustling town with a reputation as a centre of the arts. I must say it didn't make this impression on me, but it was a pleasant enough place to pass a couple of days. The Assamese new year was beginning and there was a festive atmosphere undampened by the frequent storms and power cuts.
Gautam, the owner of a tiny noodle stall, had served in the navy and recently returned to set up various businesses. He employed a ten-year-old chef who made up for his lack of culinary skills with an enormous toothy smile.
In the evening as it rained heavily Gautam interceded in an argument I was having with some drunk guys who in supposed friendship had given me a watered dram of parrafin whiskey and then tried to extort from me the price of an entire bottle. Eventually they were shamed into an apology. Gautam then presented me with a bag of delicious date-filled pastries baked for the upcoming holiday by his wife.
Can you help me? I asked the man in the laundry. Certainly I will help you, he replied, and then charged me three times the local rate - or 'thrice' as the Indians are fond of saying. When I collected my clothes the next day the ancient assistant fussed over folding them and was troubled to discover that they were not dry.
The latest IPL cricket match was blaring from the TV in the busy workers' restaurant where I ate. The unfortunate waiter had one arm and served me a cup of coffee at the bottom of which I discovered several dead ants.
***
As is the case with many places bearing evocative names, my first experience of the great Brahmaputra river was a bit of a let-down. I set out with a vision of drinking tea beneath a shady tree as hearty fishermen reeled in their catch and happy children frolicked in the shallows. But it didn't start well. The day was absurdly humid and the sweat ran down my legs as if I were incontinent. The local rabid dogs bared their teeth and barked ferociously at me.
Approaching the river I came upon a shrine to Kali. Such sites were nourished by human blood sacrifice until colonial times. The black goddess stood frozen in a grotesque dance, one leg curled in the air, glaring eyes wide and a long red tongue protruding from a gaping mouth of sharp teeth.
Multiple arms held implements of torture, and around her neck hung a necklace of severed heads with agonised expressions. Nearby I was shocked to see several horribly swollen human corpses lying amid piles of rubbish. They turned out to be papier mache idols discarded from the shrine, but the effect was jarring.
The riverside was dirty and smelly and offered no shade or refreshment. The main stream was a long way off in the distance and there was no sign of any fishermen. Below on the sand a group of surly naked boys washed a battered truck. A stinking drunk appeared and clutched at my arm, wanting me to accompany him somewhere, only wandering away after I ignored him steadfastly for several minutes. Downstream women squatted on the rocks flogging their laundry. Nobody offered a smile.
So I left and walked back towards the town. At the fence of a locked fun-park children stood staring wistfully at the big wheel and the paddle boats. A nice old man gave me a lift on his moped to the Assam tourist office where I was ushered to a heavy desk with flags on it. Here I awaited the director who arrived wiping his mouth and burping, to administer to this stupid gora who knew no better than to call at lunchtime. I took, and later ignored, his kind advice on bus timings to Guwahati.
***
The night watchman at my hotel was a squat and muscly ex-military Sikh in a camouflage vest and army boots, with a horrible fungal infection in his fingernails. But he was a nice guy and when I woke him at 5am to open the hotel gate he saluted me as I walked away to the bus station. Public buses in India are categorised as executive, super-deluxe and merely deluxe, tumbling down the scale as they dilapidate. Mine was acceptable and I enjoyed the morning ride through neat farmland.
I sat for a while at Guwahati terminal watching the barefoot beggar children devour the remainder of Gautam's pastries like hyenas on a wildlife TV programme. It wasn't long before I was approached by a local university professor who offered me a lift to the railway station and a lecture on Hindu mythology.
It's not a religion, he said; it's a culture. A true faith is defined by four things - a founder, a unifying deity, a set of holy texts, and a prescribed following. With its crores of gods and its ritual elasticity, Hinduism has none of these. In return for the ride my benefactor insisted that I promise to look up a global Hindu organisation, whose name I wrote down somewhere and promptly lost.
I was several hours early for my train to Calcutta so I wanted to put my bag in the left luggage office in the railway station. Some people said it was upstairs but it wasn't. Some people said it was past the ticket office but it wasn't. In growing frustration I went out on the platform and found it myself. The bureaucracy was so stereotypical I had to laugh. Even though three burly staff were on duty, I was not permitted to check in the bag without my own chain and lock. Naturally there was a lock-and-chain-wallah squatting nearby who happily upsold me to a 'most safe' set for Rs150.
Then back for the paperwork. Name, address, phone number. Multiple signatures. One copy for this box, one for that file, and one for me. Finally, in a rather glaring lapse of security given the application process, I was required to carry my own bag into the storage room, unsupervised, and lock it to the shelf. I could have ransacked a dozen bags. The price for 24 hours or part thereof "By Order of the Asst. Distt. Suptt. Incharge" painted to the wall was Rs10 or twenty cents.
I wandered about for a while, drinking scalding tea in the shade outside the station while being stared at, and eating a delicious masala dosa on the platform. A naked child touched my elbow. He wanted money and when I shook my head he rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue in exasperation at my ignorance. Then he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me to a food stall where he pointed at the samosas. I thought this was fair enough - at least he wasn't pointing at a tube of glue - so I bought him a few, and was touched when I saw him share them with the other hungry kids.
***
What to say about a 26-hour train ride in India? Actually I already have very little recollection of this journey. But I do remember its endlessness. I must have spoken to someone.
***
Calcutta
Arriving at Calcutta's famous Howrah Station, long bereft of its colonial glory and far less impressive than Victoria Terminus in Bombay, the usual layer of sleeping humans carpeted the main hall. Covered head to toe in blankets and completely still they could have been fatalities laid out after one of India's daily stampedes.
Outside I pushed my way through the throng of voracious hairy taxi drivers and queued instead for a prepaid cab. While waiting I was approached by a ragged young man with a 19th-century coolie's haircut. I almost waved him away as a beggar before I realised he was also a foreigner, from Japan. And so I shared my cab downtown with him and his crazy girlfriend who emitted peals of manic laughter at every word I uttered. They had already been travelling for a year, and they looked it.
Having been at Calcutta at the start of their journey they recommended the Paragon Hotel, and I should have known better given the cut of the pair of them. But it was cheap - Rs300 - and following my logic at Kaziranga and Tezpur, I decided to give it a shot. I suspected I had made a mistake when I read the Lonely Planet's description 'coffin-box rooms... as spirit-crushing as you would expect.'
In naive expectation I inspected a few different rooms but even the best reminded me of a cell in one of the psychiatric hospitals in eastern Europe you used to see on TV after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ruthless white glare from two buzzing and flickering striplights revealed every hideous detail. Great skeins of yellowing plaster peeled from the ceiling like scabs on a septic wound, and the crumbling walls were covered in thick layers of nightmarish lime-green paint streaked with hideous brown bulges of creeping damp.
Previous inmates' presence was inescapably evoked by scrawls of illiterate graffiti, clusters of toenail clippings and dried gobs of personal emissions splattered on the wall. The rock-hard beds were carelessly strewn with torn yellow sheets flecked with tiny bloodstains; the pillows were like sandbags. A shard of pus-speckled mirror hung from a rusty nail and a sticky dresser with squeaking drawers squatted grimly in the corner awaiting anyone masochistic enough to even consider unpacking their bag for a long-term stay.
The adjoining bathroom exuded a fragrance beyond my descriptive ability. Above a window sill thick with bird droppings, the sickly breeze flapped offensively through a greasy rag crudely sellotaped over the broken glass. Lengths of rusted piping protruded at grotesque angles from the walls as if embedded in acts of torture. Petrified slivers of soap and wads of tissue paper brittle with unspeakable material lay welded to a grimy ledge.
In place of a handbasin there was a slimy bucket of stagnant water supporting an oily scum studded with loathsome items. A perished rubber pipe, grafted to a tap at knee height and suspended above by a coat hanger jammed into the ceiling plaster, reluctantly spat an irregular shower of brackish water that smelled of blood. Lurking malevolently nearby was the noxious toilet whose flimsy seat had long ago detached from the bowl and now sat balanced delicately in place, lying in wait for the touch of unsuspecting buttocks.
In this filthy chamber I spent three sweaty nights which would have been largely sleepless but for the necessary medication of highly alcoholic Indian beer and veterinary-strength codeine pills. To be fair there were no bugs, but this was because even the roaches know that concrete structures absorb the unbelievable heat of the day and then radiate it after sunset. Mad dogs and Englishmen also stay inside on midsummer nights; everyone else sleeps in the open air.
***
Like in Kaziranga, after a 26-hour train ride I was dying for a beer. But like in Kaziranga, no alcohol was being served; this time because of a national holiday. So, quaking with rage, I barged across town to a five-star hotel whose bar, I figured, would probably be open. Sure enough, I spent the evening sitting on a leather armchair in air-conditioned splendour sucking up free wifi and knocking back bottles of Kingfisher that each cost as much as my hotel room.
I liked Calcutta except for the weather... I have never experienced anything like it. Perhaps the written numbers might better convey the reality. During the day the humidity peaked at ninety-five per cent and the temperature reached forty-four degrees. Even at 3am it was eighty-five per cent and thirty-two degrees. And all I had to do was tourist stuff; there were people outside doing roadworks. I felt like Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai... "Officers will not do manual labour!"
It was literally like a sauna and I was sweating like a racehorse at Aintree. I drank six litres of water a day which my body poured right back out; I never knew I had so many sweat glands on my scalp and upper lip. My hair was plastered to my head and my eyes stung. My fingers and toes crinkled like figs and eczema bloomed on my hands. Gravity seemed to strengthen and muscles weakened. My flipflops squelched along the footpath. Climbing stairs felt like an attempt on Everest.
As a result I spent a lot of time sprawled in my underwear beneath the lazy ceiling fan in my stifling room, fantasising about cool breezes I have known. I don't feel guilty at all about this. When I did venture out it was only to loll slowly between chilled refuges, pausing every ninety seconds to wipe my stinging eyes. At the Victoria Monument I contemplated the awful paintings for several hours because the benches were fan-cooled. For the same reason I attended an entire Christian church service for the first time in twenty years - even though it was conducted entirely in Bengali.
In the evenings I sat on the Maidan eating delicious chaat, watching the cricket and the kite-fliers until sundown. The grand colonial buildings along Esplanade seemed derelict but for the satellite dishes and laundry strung on the crumbling balconies. Children played in the rubbish-strewn garden of what had once been a graceful mansion; now families squatted ten to a room.
After a particularly hot day I intended to have a drink at a modest hotel near my own deathbox, and I was intrigued to find both a Hummer and an Audi R8 in the car-park outside. Less than ten feet away, whole families lived on the pavement in desperate squalor. I questioned the doorman. These vehicles belonged to the owner of the hotel - a very good man, he said. I asked, but surely this little hotel doesn't bring in enough money for him to buy cars like that? I mean, it's only Rs1500 a night! Yes, the doorman said, clamming up. Very good man. He was clearly some kind of serious gangster. So I went elsewhere for my beverage.
Leaving for the airport at 4am I found a ragged and emaciated junkie asleep in my taxi. "Look here, you!" I said, rapping on the window with my cane, "Clear off!" He awoke and glared at me with unseeing eyes, poured water over his head, urinated at the side of the road and then started the engine. The back seat was damp with his sweat. As we roared through the awakening city at a million miles an hour his eyes were closing and he seemed so out of it that I worried we would crash. I fed him cigarettes to keep him awake until we got to the airport.
***
Park Street cemetery in Calcutta is filled with the mausoleums of exotically-named British Empire-builders from the early colonial period. Among many others, Cornwallis Wilmot, Sackville Taylor and Streynsham Master all came out to dispense justice from horseback in their shirtsleeves and to make their fortunes, but ended up on Park Street before they were thirty. Their memorials, erected by 'brother officers' in 'sincere esteem' of their 'particular qualities', made fascinating reading. In the crushing heat I remember idly considering, with absurd envy, that it was probably quite cool in the stone crypts.
Amid the overgrowth I found the splendid monument to Charles 'Hindoo' Stuart, the main subject of William Dalrymple's excellent White Mughals. As the British Resident in early 19th-century Hyderabad, Stuart went native, as they used to say: he kept a harem in purdah and smoked a hookah and wore local dress and rode about in a palanquin. Most contemporaries thought him quite mad, but he clearly knew what he was about because he lived to the age of seventy - over twice the average age of the other tenants on Park Street.
The afternoon turned to evening among the tombstones. I was approached by a man so old that he could have just emerged from the ground. He wore a battered uniform and a superb moustache, and clutched a broom in his trembling hand. He opened his toothless mouth. "Good afternoon," he said in perfect received-pronunciation BBC English, "I ought to tell you that closing time is at five o'clock sharp; that is to say, in twenty minutes' time."
Amused, I asked if a bell might ring to alert visitors. "Bells? Oh no, there are no bells here," he replied, puzzled, "but were you to exit at the main gate by four-fifty, I would be most grateful. I should say, I always ask the guests to make their way out a little early, in order to shut punctually." He referred to 'guests' as if he was running a hotel. "You see," he went on, "it takes me ten minutes to dress." Dress for what? I didn't dare ask.
Now delighted, I presented myself at the gate at precisely 4:50pm in the hope that he might appear in white tie and a dinner jacket. Alas, it was just a check shirt and pressed slacks, but very elegant. "Thank you so much," he said, holding my hand, "Most considerate... as you're here, perhaps you would care to make an entry in the guest-book? It would really be most kind. This way, please."
He bustled me into a little room and sheafed the book open, licking his thumb every few pages. Shooting me a sidelong glance, he mentioned that "Many foreign guests also choose to offer a small donation - I feel it's really most kind of them." Very glad to contribute, I replied, grinning, and his wet thumb quickly folded my hundred rupees into his shirt pocket. "Most pleasant to meet you. Do have a lovely evening."
PHOTOS are HERE
