I have made the third trip to India and this time by motorcycle. I asked an Esperanto society in Calcutta to find some used motorcycle shops. I didn't received the answer. Probably my letter was not delivered, because I had enclosed an international reply coupon. It is often said that the successful delivery of mails is doubtful unless you witness a date-stamp is marked by the post office. There is a rumor that the post-office workers put the unmarked stamps into the pocket and throw the letter away into a garbage can.
But in reality, the people in India are kind and generous. In Chennai the people who made arrangements for my motorcycle took me around by car and bought me all the meals while I stayed in the city. When my motorcycle had a breakdown in the countryside, some of the local people invited me to their houses and I stayed in one of their places for three days. There were neither people who tried to steal the motorcycle nor policemen who pestered tourists for bribes. Besides, the temples in the South India don't ask any money from tourists for showing the inside unlike those in Japan.
The people in India are mild, but the climate is violent. It is reported that the summer temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius and not a few people die from the intense heat. In the South India it is hot even in winter with the temperature over 30 degrees, however, it is too cold to sleep well at night in the summer resorts with an altitude of more than 2000 m in the mountains West Ghates.
In India an extreme thing is not only the climate, but also the difference of economic condition between the rich and the poor. In the night of Bombay all the streets were occupied, which is reportedly true even now, by the sleeping bodies of homeless people. Its number was estimated to be two million 20 years ago. These bodies were completely covered with white cloth like dead bodies and its view was as ghastly as a nightmare.
Under this kind of situation, there are naturally lots of beggars, and the literacy rate is as low as 50 % in India. However, the education level of the rich people is on the contrary very high. I met two people who had read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It is an underground bestseller and in fact a difficult philosophy book. It is, in fact, a book for the maintenance of "mind", not a motorcycle.
In India, however, the maintenance of a motorcycle is much more important than that of mind. The motorcycle that I bought in Chennai is a Royal Enfield-350 made in India. Contrary to the custom of the other world, Indians shake their head sideways to mean "yes". This motorcycle is strange in the same way. Contrary to other bikes of the world, the brake must be operated by the left foot and gear shift by the right, and in addition, you must shift the gear down, not up, to gain speed.
Once you, betting your life, ride on the road on the bike like this, the road itself is chaos. Animals of many different kinds, including even birds, play there. Human beings, on the other hand, spread out the cropped rice to dry all over the road. A killer bus wants a head-on collision against an on-coming vehicle. The road itself waits for motorcycling victims by its hidden potholes.
Although I expected that the South India is tranquil rural area, I saw an inundation of people on the roads along the sea coast of the South India. This is totally natural. In this land as many as one billion people are living. And, its population has been increasing by 20 million every year. The people here speak several thousand different languages and even have different writing systems in different states.
While cows are slowly marching on the road, this country now enjoy the prosperity thanks to its computer industry, and possesses nuclear weapons. Last year India exploded one of those nuclear bombs and gave a shock to the world. India does not have oil, but have uranium. Years ago there was a rumor that the people were carrying the uranium by their bare hands in India. The cost of manpower is indeed negligible, but isn't it dangerous?
The low-cost manpower means the prices of things are also low. The cheap hotels charged less than $2 US. A bottle of Coke was only 30 cents. This drink was not only cheap, but also had a present. One day when I finished drinking, I found a rusty battery on the bottom of the bottle.
Special attention must be also paid to Indian drinks, not only to a Coke. They have beer called "Super Strong 5000". As the alcohol contents of the beer is as high as Japanese "sake" with 15 %, you can easily get heavily drunk after drinking two bottles. Whiskey is more dangerous. Not only getting drunk, but the methyl alcohol it contains sometimes would deprive you of eyesight.
The toilet paper was once missing in the rest room of the office where I work. I, noticing it after doing number two, was really in panic, but soon remembered the Indian way of using water and got through the crisis. But, I didn't know what to do with my underpants and pants for my wet buttocks. There is no paper in the toilets of India. Indian men also wear Western-style pants recently. This is still a mystery to me even after a successful return to Japan.