Chapter 8 India
I was to arrive in Calcutta just before lunch, but the plane was an hour late. The Indian awaiting me had a programme for our four days together which was a model of planning. By omitting lunch, we could still make our first call on time, and work on through the afternoon. At 5.15 next morning I would leave, my hotel to catch the 6.00 a.m. flight to Jamshedpur, and since there was no return flight late enough the same day, he had made reservations for us on the overnight train, which would leave Jamshedpur at midnight and get us back to Calcutta at 7.00 a.m., in time for an early start on the day's appointments. The last day we were to leave by car for Durgapur at 7.00 a.m., with the probability of an early finish to the day, by eight or nine at night.
There are, of course, many ways of dealing with foreign visitors. You can sit them on a hard wooden chair and leave them all day while you continue with your normal work; you can provide a relay of young hosts to ensure that the guests never get to their beds before five in the morning. At one point in my itinerary where everyone had heavy colds, the method was to cough and sneeze over me until I either succumbed or left. Providing that he himself could stand the pace, the Indian's system would at least ensure that I never returned. But I wrong him; he had merely been asked by his Bombay office to make sure that my time was properly utilised.
The drive from Dum-Dum Airport, past the arsenal where the original dum-dum bullets were cast and on into the heart of Calcutta, is a staggering introduction to India and one which later visitors will miss when the new motorway is completed. Past tumbledown shanties, shacks and wayside stalls, we fought our way among a confused, shifting mass of cars, lorries, taxis, cycles, motor-scooters, men trotting in the shafts of rickshaws, carts pulled by men and carts pulled by oxen. Past men perched despondently on their parked rickshaws, in default of a fare, people washing in street hydrants, cooking by the roadside, sleeping on the pavements; a teaming mass of humanity in dirty white dhotis.
And it was hot! Policemen on point-duty in the city centre were shielded from the sun by white umbrellas, fixed in their belts to leave their hands free; pedestrians held newspapers over their heads to protect them as they walked.
Despite the full programme, I managed to visit the bookshop next to my hotel. In Karachi I had bought the second volume of a three-volume edition of Gibbon's "Decline & Fall", which, as an odd volume was ridiculously cheap. Here in Calcutta, I was unfortunately able to buy the first and third volumes - an addition of seven pounds to the luggage I had to cart around the globe. Bookshops are a source of temptation to me; as many men find themselves in bars, I am drawn into bookshops. Normally this is not a serious matter, but on a tour where I was limited to 44 lbs. luggage weight, it threatened to be calamitous. The airlines generously allow, in addition to the 44 lbs., "a reasonable amount of reading matter" for the flight. I wondered if this three-volume set, tucked under my arm, would be considered reasonable. I had already parceled up a number of books and posted them by sea to my home and probably these would have to travel the same way. I once met a man who said that his "ambition" was to read Gibbon’s "Decline & fall", and looking through my set, I now felt that his word was apt.
The hotel was being modernised and my rooms in the new section, but the servants were of the old traditional type. My "room-boy" was a gaunt, elderly Indian with staring eyes and a disconcerting trick of materialising soundlessly in the room. One morning I glanced in the bathroom mirror to see how I was looking, and saw instead a black face with staring eyes - he was standing in the bathroom doorway waiting to be noticed. My knees turned to water, my stomach inverted itself and I do not expect to survive this shock.
In spite of the usual ten per cent service charge, he wanted tips and I was quite willing to co-operate with him - it seems to be generally true that the service-charge is a concealed price increase and that tipping is still necessary, but I would have preferred some sort of arrangement with my "boy" where I paid to be left alone, since I find it inconvenient to be interrupted three times each hour to reconfirm that I have no more laundry, nor do I see why I should take off my shoes, so that they can be cleaned again, when I am on my way out. The hotel servants are always anxious to know how long you are staying and at first, in my innocence, I took this to be a friendly interest in my affairs. But the morning of my rising at half-past-four there was a panic and flurry among the "boys", because this usually indicates a departure by jet-plane for another country. Yesterday's Room-boy came in, today's boy followed hard on his heels and then the night-boy, with sundry porters and servants, all with a claim on my bounty.
At first I am sure they did not believe my story of a short visit to Jamshedpur, but felt that this was a mean and odious subterfuge to escape without paying. Not until they realised that I was taking only an overnight-case did they consent to leave me.