Bun Butter Congress On Sofa Cum Bed?

[Bengaluru, 12/10/22]

Englandbound his entire life, Shakespeare mentions “China” just once, but only as “China dishes.”

“India” or “Indian,” though, appears in ten plays. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s a wordless “Indian boy” who’s adored by Titania, to the exasperation of her jealous husband, Oberon. In Othello, “the base Indian” is cited, while in The Tempest, “a dead Indian” is a spectacle men would pay to see.

In Troilus and Cressida, there’s this delightful phrase, “Her bed is India,” which became the title of a 1947 short story by the India-born Christine Weston. Both fiction and writer are largely forgotten.

In Merchant of Venice, “an Indian beauty” covered by “the beauteous scarf” is really “a most dangerous sea,” according to the hapless yet well-rewarded Bassanio.

In his classic 1633 poem about sex, “The Sun Rising,” John Donne chides that burning orb:

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Not perilous unless he catches gonorrhea or syphilis, Donne’s India is a sea of pleasure. He spent years in Italy and was a soldier in Cadiz and Azores. Since Donne got nowhere near India, it was but a notion, bias or spell. Unlike us, Donne couldn’t see a photo of it, but like us all, he could sort of feel or even smell it. In your face, India is like that.

In 1817, James Mills published The History of British India. The Scotsman never saw India before or after his much-praised book.

Walt Whitman only made it out of the US once, on a nearly three-month trip to Quebec and Ontario. In the States, he got as far south as New Orleans. His last major poem, though, is “Passage to India” (1870). Of course, there’s no India in its 258 lines.

“Passage to India” is not about places seen but an exhortation to explore endlessly, even into space:

O day and night, passage to you!
O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!  
Passage to you!  
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!  
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!  
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?  
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?   
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?   
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,   
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,  
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.  

Sounds just like Elon Musk after a bottle of bourbon, two cases of beer, three tabs of acid and billions more in government subsidies.

Whitman’s most frequent trips were on a ferry between Camden and Philadelphia. He didn’t have the cash to travel like most of his famous contemporaries.

By now, we’ve had an unending stream of fantastic writing in English about India, and by Indian writers, too, of course, since English is still a key glue, paradoxically, to bind this universe of over 2,000 ethnicities and 780 languages. Though 70% of Indians don’t speak any English, it’s at all businesses in Bengaluru and, I assume, all other cities.

How unlikely, this marriage of England with India, for no cultures are more unlike. Consider the food. One is renowned for its uncomplicated taste, with a squirt of mint onto a mess of bland mushy peas deemed terribly exciting, if not decadent. One flavor at a time, please. Jellied eels aren’t just tasteless, but downright icky in texture, if you can call sliminess a texture. Years ago, I read about some Englishman who died young after years of gorging on nothing but baked beans and chips. At least he was happy. Now, the Sunday roast is a happy occasion, but most Indians won’t touch beef, so that’s that. They say nay to beef with mustard, and sweet beef is no endearment.

What about the English breakfast? With its fried tomato to sop up the grease, and sweetish baked beans to balance the salty bacon and eggs, it has range, plus a variety of textures, and frontal crudity, too, with its fried bread. Here in Bengaluru, though, you’d have to be Sherlock Holmes to sniff out an English breakfast. It’s still too blasé for Indians, perhaps? They need their spices.

Indians do Chinese. There are the chains, Wow! China and Mainland China. Fried rice and lo mein can even found at holes in the wall, and there’s the Manchurian, an Indo-Chinese dish concocted in Bombay half a century ago. Tibetan dumplings, momos, arrived via Nepal. Often spiced up, these offerings can be as hot as ordinary Indian dishes. At nearly each meal, I sweat a river while constantly wiping the top of my head, forehead, eyes and nose. Nourishing itself, my body sobs and sniffles. Glancing at me with curiosity, amusement or horror, waiters sometimes bring me extra napkins. Though one must sweat to eat is a universal truism, I take it way too literally.

Needing a reprieve from such tongue searing, I ordered lemon rice, only to have, again, all the sweat wrung out of me. Indians need their spices, for real.

When not eating, I don’t sweat, for it’s cool here, unlike in Saigon, Phnom Penh or Bangkok. Each day, I trek a few miles. Bengaluru’s busy traffic and alleys packed with people and tiny shops feel familiar. Its density of humanity, though, can exceed anything I’ve experienced.

Even with a green light, motorbikes, tuk-tuks, cars and buses will often honk, with the last in a musical flourish, for they run red lights here, you see, and jaywalking is compulsory.

Twisting and turning, I yoga my way through Jumma Masjid Road’s surging sea of saried flesh and tuk-tuk metal. Gaining confidence with each drunken master or Buster Keaton move, I must refrain from shouting olé! If Indians didn’t consider cows sacred, they’d make fantastic matadors, for sure.

Speaking of cows, they can’t be happy living on concrete in overcrowded cities and never seeing grass, though some are well-fed on unsellable vegetables and garbage. Even when old or crippled, they must live on. In a dank alley reeking of cow urine, I encountered seven or eight miserable creatures, including a calf who collapsed after being let out from a dark doorway. Even when yanked with a rope by its keeper, this infant refused to budge. An elderly cow hobbled on a bent leg.

The variety of Indians is striking. All indigenous, they range from light to black, with Oriental features here and there, and all sorts of body shapes, from stick figure slim to walrus voluptuous. Striking deformities or injuries abut the most gorgeous and handsome features. On their sidewalks, Indians see more in a day than most Americans in a year, if not lifetime.

When it comes to Indian cities, it’s preposterous to order social distancing. They simply can’t. As for mask wearing, very few bother.

Where almost nothing is too weird, it’s hard to feel visibly out of place, and Indians don’t stare, even when I wander into the most obscure alleys. At 7 in the morning, I can be comfortable at any chai joint, among regulars, with each man or woman cheered by a 12-cent glass of warmth and sweetness.

[Bengaluru, 12/9/22]

As for low-end bars, I fit right in, of course, though Indian ones are, almost comically, the most dismal I’ve seen. There are no attempts at decorations. In stark, often dim or dark rooms, men sit with their cartons of rum, boozing mostly in silence. If insane asylums or prisons had bars, these would fit the bill. Rigid, a dark, bald man stares at nothing. By contrast, English pubs are communal living rooms where children and dogs are also welcomed.

After ordering your drink at a counter, you find a metal chair or stand at a messy, narrow bar, to contemplate how to end your life that very night. Seriously, though, there’s peace inside these joints, for you’re removed from the chaos and constant honking outside. Bare walls restore one’s equilibrium. Indian dives are like Zen retreats, with rum.

[New Ganga Bar near Indiranagar Station on 12/8/22]

English everywhere also makes me feel at home, though its usage here can be unique. If someone violates a law, he’s a defaulter. One does not take, but undertake, an assignment or commission. A politician wasn’t seen with a gangster, but a rowdy. There’s an innocuous sandwich salaciously dubbed “butter bun congress,” but congress is just spiced peanuts. A sign near my hotel advertises “sofa cum bed,” which I’m not entirely unfamiliar with, admittedly.

Writing this piece yesterday, I wandered into upscale RCB Bar, thinking it had Wi-Fi, but it didn’t. When it was time to pay for my two drafts of Kingfisher, the young waitress said, “Where are you from, Sir?”

“Vietnam.”

“We look the same!” she smiled.

“Are you an immigrant or Indian?”

“Indian.”

“So you’re from Assam.”

“Yes,” she smiled even brighter.

“I would like to visit. There must be a train.”

“There is, but it takes three or four days.”

“Three or four days! This country is vast.”

I won’t be able to see her home state this time, I rued. Maybe next time.

Ten days earlier at Alliance University, a law student from Assam told me there had been more protests against the influx of Hindus from other parts of India and Bangladesh. That’s always the story, and not just everywhere but forever. If you don’t fight for your heritage, it will be eroded if not destroyed.

This morning’s first writing station was at Indian Coffee House, a charmingly old school joint haunted by old men, couples and families, to enjoy runny omelets over toasts and passable coffee. Though a chain beloved by Commies and Socialists, it feels very traditional, with waiters in turbans and sashes who call you sir, and not comrade. With no music, it’s a perfect place to write or just space out, but there’s no Wi-Fi. Like many people, I use it as an encyclopedia and library.

With two weeks left in India, I’m not done babbling about it, so will pause presently.

To finish, I had to move down the street, to another chain, Third Wave. Dreading crappy American music, I was pleasantly surprised to walk in on Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald singing “Isn’t This A Lovely Day”:

The weather is fright'ning
The thunder and lightning
Seem to be having their way
But as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely day
The turn in the weather
Will keep us together
So I can honestly say
That as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely day
And everything's okay

That gracious and lovely America is long lost. Doesn’t that make you tear up?

Due to Cyclone Mandous, the umbrellas are out. After a few Christmas songs, all tasteful, Doris Day comes on with “Singing in the Rain.” Beneath the surface chaos, Indians know what they’re doing, or they couldn’t have survived this long.

Each year, India loses a frightful percentage of its best engineers, computer scientists and doctors to the self-destructing West, but it’s probably hopeless. Though the England of Shakespeare and Donne is done with, there will always be an India. As for that unctuous Rishi Sunak, the UK can keep him, please.

Oh God, now it’s Fats Waller and his tinkling piano, then a choir performing “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

Onto a still drizzling Church Street, I sail forth. Light giving sun, are you still there?

[Bengaluru, 12/7/22]

[Bengaluru, 12/6/22]

[Bengaluru, 12/7/22]

[Bengaluru, 12/4/22]