Monday, June 29, 2015

Of Zen and starry skies - Part II

This is part 2 of the series. You can read the earlier part here.

Phuentsholing is a small border town on the Bhutan side of India, while the Indian side of India calls it Jaigaon (Apparently, India ‘phunds’ 2/3rd of Bhutan’s annual budget). Phuentsholing is pronounced as Phun-Show-Ling by tourists and Phun-sleing by the natives – it requires heavy practice. The practice sessions starts every morning at 5, requiring you to take a dip in the swimming pool and breathing out the word underwater. Be warned that the chances of you drowning are more than you ever getting it right. The road leading from Jaigaon is plundered by potholes to meet a grand border structure beyond which it looks like the Middle Zealand of The Lego movie with happy people. You may even start humming “Everythiinngg is awesome!” automatically (especially if you have crossed over from a town in India). The only difference between Middle Zealand and Bhutan is that, in the latter, the happy people are real! Construct a similar smooth road in India, there are likely to be more cases against which Salman Khan will be, obviously, acquitted.
Phuentsholing is a small town with a couple of straight roads, equal numbered smiling Bhutanese and polite, down-to-earth and decent behaving Indians. The latter are likely to be loud and boisterous raccoons if you put them on the other side of the border. The Phuensholing Bhutanese are easily distinguishable. They are the lovey-dovey pink-cheeked people who can speak a little bit of Hindi (of course, better Hindi from Tamil people) and words-strung-into-sentences-English (the competition here, with our Tamil people, couldn’t even hold a candle!) and can be extremely courteous. They can be so courteous that the British would be put to shame for their courtesy.

It took us a bit of lazy, aimless walking to find a place to crash. But for 700 bucks, we found an amazing place overlooking the Permit Office. We were time-travelling by half hour between India and Bhutan and every time we entered Bhutan, we got out pockets checked for cigarettes. Bhutanese cannot carry-in any tobacco products and any foreigner (we forgot that we were foreigners too) has to pay 100% duty on the value. A maximum of 5 packets of cigarettes are allowed. Public smoking is banned (like, really banned, no way around the law) and if caught with cigarettes without the duty receipt, cleaning tables in the drive-away restaurant might be the most sought after career option.
The Royal Army (Dantak) of Bhutan welcomes you
Prashant and I were under the assumption that momos are a delicacy here (apologies for being racist), but the ground realities were different. There WERE momos alright! And they came in two types – cheese and beef momos. The cheese momos may be made with yak milk cheese, sure you wanna try? When it comes to food in Phuentsholing, almost everything you order is make to order – meaning fresh, soft, supple and edible. We had an Indian dinner (the last one for a very long time) and the prices were comparable to Jaigaon’s. So we paid in INR. Phuentsholing is the only place in Bhutan where our 500 Rs. notes would be accepted. Due to high instances of counterfeit notes, transaction in 500 Rs. notes were banned. Not like the cigarette ban, the transaction would be at the Bhutanese’s risk. So, it was time to convert our 500s to 100s and it became a huge burden to carry them. With almost no ATMs and no card swiping services, Bhutan makes up for the lack of technological development with evolved social traits of honesty, sincerity and low (almost nil) theft and crime rates.
In the streets of Phuentsholing

Good morning Bhutan, it was 11th of December 2012. Ten days before the world was prophesied to come to an end (Remember 21st December 2012?). If I were to die, I thought, I will die in the happiest country in the world. With a copy of our driving license/voter’s identity card/passport, we were the second in line that was waiting outside the Permit Office, at 8 a.m. The office opened at 9. We submitted our documents, got our photos clicked and left for breakfast. As we were leaving, there was an exodus of Indians (mostly migrant labours) waiting for their photographs to be clicked. Almost all the laborious work for developmental activities is carried out by Indians, while the masters are also Indian contractors under the contractual employment of the Bhutanese government. We came back after an hour to get our permits and I was left greatly disappointed that my passport still remained a virgin. No stamping on the precious Indian passports - Bhutan’s policy - in exchange for preferential treatment in terms of zero processing/visa fees, freedom to roam around without a guide with the exception of the birth right of every Indian to spit anywhere.

Packing our backs in no time, we reached the local bus stand and waited to embark on our journey - a journey into one of the most beautiful cities ensconced by mountains and a river after which the city was named – Paro.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Of Zen and starry skies - Part I

This wasn’t the usual Coromandel Express ride: the one that starts at 9:05 sharp and makes you smell mustard oil all the way. This one was minus the friends; one that makes you think that that the true essence of life is to be busy; one which brings out the realization that everyone has something worthwhile to do in life that being on a 26 hour train journey is the last of their things to do. With a mind full of hope of getting my passport finally stamped, I boarded the Coromandel Express which started at 8:45 a.m., again, sharp.
The Calcutta Chromosome is a good train read. Although it had a few bits and pieces of a futuristic Calcutta, it wasn’t too different from the present day city. Only a few cities have that charm to not let time take over and Calcutta will be at the pole position, every single one of those times. She is a city that has all that the future holds, and yet can coexists with the past simultaneously. 
A simple example would be the transportation system in Calcutta. Get down at Howrah -> take a ferry to Babu Ghat -> walk around the old British architecture buildings, whiling away time with a Kachori and cha around the court corners -> hop on a tram -> get down at Esplanade -> take a metro to Park Street -> have nimbupani -> come back in a bus to Madras CafĂ© -> have a tummy-filling South Indian meal -> head back to Babu Ghat. Whaddya know - it’s already dark! For anyone not from East, the sky becoming pitch dark at 5:30 is a phenomenon, but that’s how our IST standardization works. Welcome to Calcutta – the futuristic city of the ‘60s!

My train to New Jalpaiguri (it took me some Bangla training to get the pronunciation right. So let’s just call it NJP) was at 5:30 p.m. It’s the December cold that makes the matki-cha wala, a millionaire (in paisa terms) on the platform. Burdwan (or Bardhamman or Vardhamman) invoked the Bengali in me, but it was after office hours and it wasn’t difficult for me to put him on the “Hobe Na” mode. One gets to meet interesting characters in a train journey and the most common thing amongst them is the level of distrust their eyes convey. “So, you are travelling alone eh? I despise you! And don’t think you can steal my kid!” Perceptions change when you take out a withered copy of 1984. Then they trust you like how they would trust a condom. “I trust you, but I pray that you don’t tear up that trust and prove to be a rogue”. Tell them that you are a pseudo-intellectual from NIT-IIT, and you are already family. No one pays any heed to that pseudo-intellectuality though. Brand plays and pays for the free luchi puris that you just shared.
The only good photo I took on the trip
Kamrup Express was on time and NJP was cold. Cold to the extent that the juvenile pleasure of smoking without even lighting a cigarette was possible. I waited and waited for a train from Delhi which was already 4 hours late. Prashant finally made it to the NJP station at around 9 and soon after, we went searching for shared autos to the Siliguri bus stand. The last bus to Jaigaon was about to leave at 11:20 a.m. and we were lucky enough to get seats on the overcrowded bus. Taking the hilly terrain into consideration, a journey of approximately 150 km would take us about 5 hours. The hopes of seeing the sun setting in India looked glim, but the excitement of being in a different country for another 10 days kept my spirits up!
Photo by Prashant Arora
It was 6:30. The sun had set 2 hours ago. And we were still travelling. Google Maps put us at least 20 km away from the destination. At 7:30 we disembarked the bus. The pressure in the groin pushed us straight in the direction of the nearest toilet. If one has to describe that out-of-the-world feeling, you could say we accelerated faster than gravity. How do we know that? From the relief one gets after withstanding this torture for more than 3 hours. This relief could be called as closest to that of a cluttered mind attaining Zen.
Photo by Prashant Arora
With broken Bengali, we found our way to the border. We paid the share-auto-guy in Rupees and he returned the change in Ngultrums. Our first ‘phoreign’ currency exchange! With much fascination, we crossed the border. Wait, wait! Hold on for a minute now. I had to take a step back and peer into India before moving forward. Oh my Gawd! What is this place? Is this how Bangladeshis feel, when they step into India? Serene, clean, orderly, lesser people and smiling ones too (bloody they even use indicators to take a turn). Welcome to Bhutan – the land of the thunder-dragon and I hope you are not carrying any cigarettes!
Photo by Prashant Arora