ANOTHER WORLD
Gokkula, Muzafarpur District, Bihar
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited: December 1987 to February 1988
Written: May 1995
Anyone heading for an unfamiliar destination would carry some pre-conceived notions on the experiences likely to be undergone during his/her visit – at least to the extent of whether they would be positive or negative. Tahiti carries visions of grass-skirted nymphets dancing all around you, New York of being mugged and Brazil of high quality football being played everywhere. The impressions one leaves with are usually different, some more and some less. But it is a rare occasion when one’s notions undergo a complete about turn – when all you see on Tahiti’s beaches are fat old Aunties, when meandering around Central Park at midnight enables you to meet only philanthropists and when Sao Paolo versus Santos reminds you of Mohan Bagan versus East Bengal.
This has happened to me just once – Bihar.
My initial emotion upon being told that I was to spend ten weeks with a small voluntary agency in some corner of Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was, to understate things, not positive – something of a cross between sheer fright and a feeling of how on earth did this happen to me. Bihar was a place existing only in newspapers and in conversations with Bihari friends at University. A place of extreme caste differences leading to massacres every now and then. A place ruled by mustachioed landlords who had absolute command over land and everything on it as far as the eye could see, with dusky tribal beauties dancing to their bidding and private armies to settle scores. A place where value for life was close to zero, indirectly proportional to the murder rate, where crime and corruption were rampant across all walks of life. My sole ambition (my attempts to duck out of the assignment did not succeed) was to come out of there alive. Advice from Bihari friends to do so was a) do not get into any trouble and b) if you do get into trouble i) speak only in English and ii) act as if you own the place.
It was thus with quivering knees that me and two fellow sufferers headed from Delhi to Patna, further on to Muzaffarpur via Vaishali, then to Jafarpur and then the village (Gokkula) where we were expected to act as big shot management consultants for a period of 3 months to an organization called Paroo Prakhand Samajik Vikas Pariyojana (PPSVP), known to the local public as the Praajikt.
It was at Muzaffarpur bus stand that Bihar started coming to life, where the bus connecting Muzaffarpur to Gokkula was identified not by its number or destination but by a name. Yes, the bus had a name – Balam Pardesiyan! Balam Pardesiyan was an old and decrepit relic of the Tata Mercedes tie-up, which carried as many people on top as it did inside. It had no papers, and therefore did not run on days in which the owner (who doubles up as the conductor) had information of checking by the RTO. Identification of buses by their names, I soon found, was not restricted to Balam Pardesiyan. Exotic ames for buses operating in mofussil Muzaffarpur abounded – Crack Fighter, Jet Fighter, Jungle Tiger – the names rolled easily of tongues unfamiliar with English. Balam Pardesiyan was a particularly sweet bus – it went along from Gokkula to Muzaffarpur and back every day (unless there was checking), covering an over fifty-kilometer journey in over three hours. On one journey an old man desperately needed to exercise his bowels, so the bus stopped, waited for him to find a bottle of water and do the job, and then proceeded along as though this was a regular occurrence.
Upon reaching the campus at some unearthly hour of the night, we found that we were not expected. The campus had had a dacoity two days earlier, thereby taking their minds of minor matters such as hosting of management experts. The three of us were put into a jhopdi and told that discussions regarding our futures could well take place the next day.
The Project must have had some pull with the local administration, because a police picket was set up within the campus itself so as to restore calm in the aftermath of the dacoity. And that’s where we met Sharmaji.
I had often read, especially in Louis L’Amour, of people who had the gift of story telling. Sharmaji was one of those. He was a constable in the local police station (at the block headquarters in Paroo, 10 km from Gokkula) who was in the picket, and when he was not on duty he was sitting around a fire and telling us about life in Bihar. He had a habot of ending each sentence with a ‘samjhiye na’, with a variety of musical intonations, ‘samjhiiiiiiye na’, ‘samjhiya naaaaa’, and so on, and his stories had two themes – himself and marriages Bihari style. We got to know a lot about him, why, as a BA, he was only a constable in the police, how he got out of doing morning PT during his training by giving tuitions to the commandant’s daughter, how he handled ‘keermeenals’ during interrogation, etcetera.
Marriages were equally interesting and, in later talks with people, I found that what he talked about was generally true though it did not seem so in those younger innocent days when we were first there. That in Begusarai district the BA final exams were always held under armed guards so that fathers of marriageable girls did not whisk away suitable boys at gunpoint. That a marriageable boy would be dealing with three or four girls’ parties, and the ones that were rejected would invariably attempt to thwart the marriage, which was why weapons were always carried by baraats. That, in one case, the boy did not like the looks of the girl when he saw her (which was at the marriage) and the girl’s side, foreseeing the eventuality, had blocked off all exits. So he escaped by jumping out of a bathroom window. So the girl’s side promptly caught hold of one of his friends, also eligible, and forced him to marry her. So at the time of the garlanding, he promptly went and garlanded one of the girl’s friends (presumable better looking). I also learnt that, whatever the circumstances of the wedding, it was recognized and respected.
Though the first, Sharmaji was not the only interesting person we met during the sojourn. Another such person was Bhuvanshwar Dayal Singh, the largest landlord of the area who at 6 foot 3 sttod out in an area of largely short people. BD Singh was approximately 55 years of age and had only two interests in life, his evening bhang and cricket, the former being a longtime attraction and the latter having developed over the previous year or two.
Despite him being a board member of the Project (an uninterested one whose opinion of the Project Director was that he, the PD, was a ‘Ghapchoo’), it was cricket that sparked a friendship between this old man and the three of us that lasted throughout our visit. Once the police picket was removed, we started getting bored in the evenings and therefore one day headed towards the village grounds where the boys were playing cricket, which we promptly joined. A white-haired, oldish, bespectacled man in a white dhoti and kurta was the umpire, fondly (sometimes not particularly fondly) referred to by the boys as Umpire Dhotiwala. He had taken up the job because he found that evening cricket among boys led to fights, and fights in that part of Bihar extend from boys to their families to their caste biraadari. With his presence there was no question of a show of dissent, forget about fights. Cricket slowly got to him. Being past the age of hitting sixes or having batsmen ducking to his bouncers, he took up the umpiring aspect seriously and regularly went to Muzaffarpur (this part had no electricity) when cricket was telecast so that he could watch the umpires. What he saw was promptly replicated on the village maidan in Gokkula, the only concession being that of his attire. He found us a minefield of information on the technical aspects of cricket, so it soon became a ritual after the game for us to head towards the teashop together where, for an hour or so, he would pump us with questions.
The area was a place where the friendliest of fellows could turn out to be dreaded criminals. One such was one of the cricketers, a young chap named Jalandhar, who became our sidekick over the course of the sojourn. He had decided not to go to school, the logic being that his three elder brothers had gone to school so as to cut grass for a living, something he could do perfectly well without schooling, thank you. He turned out to be the local expert and consultant on booth capturing.
Another was a fellow we had met while on our way on cycle to the Gandak river to have a bath, when he waved us down from inside his compound and sat us down for a cup of tea. He was a short, lame, bearded man with piercing eyes, with a hero-worshipping son and the gift of the gab. The tea session lasted two hours and we got to hear the story of his life, how he was a truck driver and had had an accident, how when he was operated upon no amount of anesthetic could knock him off, and how due to some mistaken identity he was once arrested and the police came in a jeep to do so (apparently it is a status symbol among a certain section of society when police come in a jeep to arrest you). He came across as a happy content man who had lived his life fully and was now watching his children grow. We went back to the Project and mentioned that we had met this fellow to find that he was the owner of the local illegal bomb factory.
Life there moved at a leisurely pace. We were woken up at around 7 am by the Project mess boy with tea and biscuits after which we lazed around inside our razais (Bihar winters get quite cold, and we remained in the jhopdi we were first put up in right through our stay) until it was warm enough to move outside. Baths were had at a handpump in our underwear in the open. Food was served at around 11 am and then again at 8 pm, between which time some work was done, some cricket was played and some gup was exchanged with all our friends there.
There were moments away from the normal run of things, such as when a ‘Nautanki’ (a form of folk art local to these parts) came to Gokkula and we sat up and watched an all-night performance. It had men doing all the men and women roles, and if you did not know that the latter were men you would be fooled. I almost walked up to one of the actors to say “Hey! What’s a respectable lady like you doing in a place like this?”. Lots of song and dance and great fun!
The time came for us to return to civilization. Tearful farewells and wild promises of returning were made. The culture shock began from Muzaffarpur onwards. Roads, electricity, busy people!
We kept up a correspondence for some time, exchanging cards and the occasional letter. This died out over the years. Today, that little part of the world and its people are still vivid in my memory. The hospitality to three strange men from a different part of the country, their warmth, their curiosity about our lives! I do not know if I ever want to go back. But today, when people talk of Bihar as comparable only with hell, I smile slowly and mention that it is that and much more – it is an experience.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Lake District
England’s Lake District
For once in my life, I decided to follow the tourist guides’ list of things one must do in England. A group of us, all Indians holding mid-career fellowships at LSE, decided to hire a large van and drive from London to the Lake District, spend two days in the salubrious environment of hills and dales and the nights in some B&B, and drive back over a long weekend. Some research on hiring a vehicle was conducted and a deal was struck with some firm in north London – to our relief an Indian driving license, or any driving license written in English, allows you to drive anywhere in the UK. We picked up the vehicle, a large Volkswagen, on an early Friday afternoon and duly hit the motorway pointing north. The Lake District by late evening, locate a Bed & Breakfast with a view, and start soaking in the environment was our official plan of action for the day.
The rest of England seemed to share our plans. All routes north had gigantic quantities of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, with jams, obstructions and blockages all along. Oh dear! We soon realized that we were not going to get anywhere near the Lake District unless we were planning on driving through the night, and decided on a night halt at some small town on the way. And thus, quite by chance, we hit upon Stafford by about 7 in the evening and found a place for the night. Having settled in, three of us males decided to hit the town center and check out the Friday evening action.
The town center was buzzing with life. Stafford is the local county (Staffordshire) headquarters and apparently the height of excitement for the local peasantry is to hit the town center on Friday evenings. Taxi after taxi came in, offloaded groups of young people dressed to get laid, and went off. This was pretty good fun to watch for a while, and to fancy our chances, until the throats started clamoring for some alcohol. We found a bar in which the crowd looked late twenties onwards and went in. It was crowded with huge men with bulging muscles, shaven heads and tattoos, the signature attire of right wing white supremacist groups, and with lovely women with next to nothing on, all drinking loudly and chatting each other up. The women were more of an incentive than the men were a deterrent, and so we made our way to the bar, got our drinks, and settled down within quick reach of the doors in case of the need for a hasty exit. By our second drink we realized that we were in no danger, the men were all perfectly friendly and nobody, despite this being the October after September 11th, gave us a hint of a suspicious look. By our third, we started circulating and by the fourth we were the targets of eye contact from unattached old women. We wrenched ourselves away after far too much to drink and a little more, all of us thinking that an ideal career would be as the official gigolo here.
We managed to leave Stafford the next morning and reach the Lake District by midday. A word about driving in the UK – apart from the fact that they also do it on the left side of the road, there are few similarities between there and in India. For one, it is necessary to know the rules, especially the right of way rules, and also necessary to observe them. This is surprisingly difficult for those of us who have learnt our driving here, where the rules are not really rules and where might is right. Second, it is not done to stop wherever one feels like – for a pee, to ask for directions, to pick up a paan, or any reason – one has to look for an exit to the road with space to park. Third, it is absolutely necessary to know the way, as one’s lane selections have to be spot on to reach the desired destination and not a completely different place, and taking a U-turn is near impossible. Having a navigator, someone who can read a map and point out the correct way and the correct lane choice, is an asset. Fourth, the driving rules on the motorways (the main highway system in Britain) are quite different from driving in the towns and on the lesser highways, which in turn is quite different from driving in London. Having said that, we were quite all right once our driver had got used to the vehicle and the driving etiquette, and that took about two hours on the road.
The less said about the Lake District that weekend, the better! Huge crowds, long queues, no accommodation, traffic jams - anyone who has been to Nainital or Mussoorie on a hot summer weekend will know the experience. We did manage to find parking space, but options for serious walking were limited by restrictions due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic and the need to find somewhere to sleep. We finally gave up the search by evening and decided that the best course of action would be to head to the next county, Lancashire, and find a small town where, like the previous night, there would be accommodation for seven people on a Saturday night.
We ended up, after a long and tiring search, in an old-style hotel in a coastal town called Morecambe just in time to settle in, grab an hour at the bar and find a place still open for dinner. The hotel bar was quite an experience – it was reasonably (but not very) packed with locals, all of whom were over 50, mostly lower middle and working class, with strange accents and tired faces, enjoying an evening out with the mates. Most were already plastered by the time we got in, and the talk was mainly on the fortunes of the local football team FC Morecambe, struggling away in the third division, to the exclusion of nearby Liverpool and Manchester United. Not at all the beautiful people associated with Saturday night drinking in a bar! The only barmaid, a middle-aged but buxom lady called Cindy (pronounced Sin-deh) did all the serving and washing up and still managed to find time to chat, telling us how difficult it was to get rid of those morons (i.e. the clientele) at closing up time, right in front of them. The hotel was not, in the slightest way, on the tourist track and they were all quite surprised at being found by a bunch of Indians on the road. Between Cindy and the drunks, we were made very welcome indeed.
The next day was spent returning to London, with an afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon to add to our list of ‘been there, done that’. Stratford is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and everything in the town is geared towards selling him to American tourists. The things to do in Stratford include seeing a play at the theatres along the river, visiting his birthplace, visiting his school, visiting his wife’s birthplace, visiting the restaurants he frequented, visiting the toilet he graced with his refuse (no, no, not seriously, but you get the drift). The best that Stratford had to offer on that Sunday afternoon was a visiting motorcycle gang, and thus a bewildering array of Harley Davidson, BMW and Kawasaki motorcycles all parked in formation along the river. I wonder if the riders had come to see a play.
The return to London was preceded by a great English dinner at one of the pubs in the countryside around Stratford, and was uneventful until we reached London and got thoroughly lost. All the map reading skills acquired on the highway went for a toss in central London’s one-ways and no-entries. We finally did manage to reach our residence, and to return the vehicle the next morning.
For once in my life, I decided to follow the tourist guides’ list of things one must do in England. A group of us, all Indians holding mid-career fellowships at LSE, decided to hire a large van and drive from London to the Lake District, spend two days in the salubrious environment of hills and dales and the nights in some B&B, and drive back over a long weekend. Some research on hiring a vehicle was conducted and a deal was struck with some firm in north London – to our relief an Indian driving license, or any driving license written in English, allows you to drive anywhere in the UK. We picked up the vehicle, a large Volkswagen, on an early Friday afternoon and duly hit the motorway pointing north. The Lake District by late evening, locate a Bed & Breakfast with a view, and start soaking in the environment was our official plan of action for the day.
The rest of England seemed to share our plans. All routes north had gigantic quantities of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, with jams, obstructions and blockages all along. Oh dear! We soon realized that we were not going to get anywhere near the Lake District unless we were planning on driving through the night, and decided on a night halt at some small town on the way. And thus, quite by chance, we hit upon Stafford by about 7 in the evening and found a place for the night. Having settled in, three of us males decided to hit the town center and check out the Friday evening action.
The town center was buzzing with life. Stafford is the local county (Staffordshire) headquarters and apparently the height of excitement for the local peasantry is to hit the town center on Friday evenings. Taxi after taxi came in, offloaded groups of young people dressed to get laid, and went off. This was pretty good fun to watch for a while, and to fancy our chances, until the throats started clamoring for some alcohol. We found a bar in which the crowd looked late twenties onwards and went in. It was crowded with huge men with bulging muscles, shaven heads and tattoos, the signature attire of right wing white supremacist groups, and with lovely women with next to nothing on, all drinking loudly and chatting each other up. The women were more of an incentive than the men were a deterrent, and so we made our way to the bar, got our drinks, and settled down within quick reach of the doors in case of the need for a hasty exit. By our second drink we realized that we were in no danger, the men were all perfectly friendly and nobody, despite this being the October after September 11th, gave us a hint of a suspicious look. By our third, we started circulating and by the fourth we were the targets of eye contact from unattached old women. We wrenched ourselves away after far too much to drink and a little more, all of us thinking that an ideal career would be as the official gigolo here.
We managed to leave Stafford the next morning and reach the Lake District by midday. A word about driving in the UK – apart from the fact that they also do it on the left side of the road, there are few similarities between there and in India. For one, it is necessary to know the rules, especially the right of way rules, and also necessary to observe them. This is surprisingly difficult for those of us who have learnt our driving here, where the rules are not really rules and where might is right. Second, it is not done to stop wherever one feels like – for a pee, to ask for directions, to pick up a paan, or any reason – one has to look for an exit to the road with space to park. Third, it is absolutely necessary to know the way, as one’s lane selections have to be spot on to reach the desired destination and not a completely different place, and taking a U-turn is near impossible. Having a navigator, someone who can read a map and point out the correct way and the correct lane choice, is an asset. Fourth, the driving rules on the motorways (the main highway system in Britain) are quite different from driving in the towns and on the lesser highways, which in turn is quite different from driving in London. Having said that, we were quite all right once our driver had got used to the vehicle and the driving etiquette, and that took about two hours on the road.
The less said about the Lake District that weekend, the better! Huge crowds, long queues, no accommodation, traffic jams - anyone who has been to Nainital or Mussoorie on a hot summer weekend will know the experience. We did manage to find parking space, but options for serious walking were limited by restrictions due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic and the need to find somewhere to sleep. We finally gave up the search by evening and decided that the best course of action would be to head to the next county, Lancashire, and find a small town where, like the previous night, there would be accommodation for seven people on a Saturday night.
We ended up, after a long and tiring search, in an old-style hotel in a coastal town called Morecambe just in time to settle in, grab an hour at the bar and find a place still open for dinner. The hotel bar was quite an experience – it was reasonably (but not very) packed with locals, all of whom were over 50, mostly lower middle and working class, with strange accents and tired faces, enjoying an evening out with the mates. Most were already plastered by the time we got in, and the talk was mainly on the fortunes of the local football team FC Morecambe, struggling away in the third division, to the exclusion of nearby Liverpool and Manchester United. Not at all the beautiful people associated with Saturday night drinking in a bar! The only barmaid, a middle-aged but buxom lady called Cindy (pronounced Sin-deh) did all the serving and washing up and still managed to find time to chat, telling us how difficult it was to get rid of those morons (i.e. the clientele) at closing up time, right in front of them. The hotel was not, in the slightest way, on the tourist track and they were all quite surprised at being found by a bunch of Indians on the road. Between Cindy and the drunks, we were made very welcome indeed.
The next day was spent returning to London, with an afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon to add to our list of ‘been there, done that’. Stratford is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and everything in the town is geared towards selling him to American tourists. The things to do in Stratford include seeing a play at the theatres along the river, visiting his birthplace, visiting his school, visiting his wife’s birthplace, visiting the restaurants he frequented, visiting the toilet he graced with his refuse (no, no, not seriously, but you get the drift). The best that Stratford had to offer on that Sunday afternoon was a visiting motorcycle gang, and thus a bewildering array of Harley Davidson, BMW and Kawasaki motorcycles all parked in formation along the river. I wonder if the riders had come to see a play.
The return to London was preceded by a great English dinner at one of the pubs in the countryside around Stratford, and was uneventful until we reached London and got thoroughly lost. All the map reading skills acquired on the highway went for a toss in central London’s one-ways and no-entries. We finally did manage to reach our residence, and to return the vehicle the next morning.
The Far North
The Far North
Being stuck in London in mid-November with a bit of cash and little to do does strange things to one’s mental balance. Some get tickets to the theatre; others try to pick up women (or men) in the fleshpots of Soho. The more unbalanced go to Upton Park to watch West Ham play football. I booked a holiday to Tromso.
If you are among the majority population, you would be, right now, asking the question ‘where the hell is Tromso?’ If, on the other hand, you are among that group of people familiar with matters within the Arctic Circle, you would know that Tromso, a thriving city of about 50,000 deep in the Norwegian Arctic zone, is also known as the ‘Paris of the North’. Located at about 70 degrees latitude on Norway’s western coast, it consists of a series of islands and advertises great scenery, art, culture, a university, museums, explorations in the arctic wilderness, the works. Which, no doubt, still begs the question ‘why Tromso? Isn’t all this stuff available in pleasanter places, obviating the necessity of crossing the Arctic circle in November?’
Precisely the point! If you are looking to visit a place which you have not been to, which no one you know has ever been to, which no one you know is ever going to go to, and which still can bring out that gleam of envy at cocktail parties, Tromso is it. Imagine a conversation at the next page three do with a diamond engulfed low neckline, well, you know, Scandinavian cruises are nice enough, all these fjords and stuff, but the fun is up north where the air has bite, the night is long and the clubs are hard. Or with one of those outdoor studs, yeah, at 10,000 feet in the Swiss Alps is OK, I guess, but if you are looking for the real thing there is little to beat the tundra in winter. Social success, and maybe a little more, guaranteed.
Such were my thoughts while boarding an (very) early SAS flight from London to Oslo, from where I was supposed to change on to a flight to Tromso. Two and a half hours to Oslo, a 45 minute changeover at Oslo airport, another two hours to Tromso and voila, lunch on the other side of the Arctic circle. Just like flying Bangalore to Delhi to Calcutta. An afternoon of rest and recreation before hitting the nightspots beckoned. Wait a minute, only 45 minutes between landing in Oslo and taking off for Tromso – would that not be a bit tight? Only if you are on Indian Airlines, I told myself, these Scandinavians do things with minute precision, no need for plan B.
The flight to Oslo was late. The queue at the immigration counter was long. The immigration officer, when I finally got in front of one, almost spluttered his coffee all over himself upon being told that an Indian was on his way to Tromso because he wanted a weekend break. “Damn the Schengen Agreement that we have to let these crazies into the country just because they have work in Bonn or Brussels!” he seemed to be muttering to himself as he examined my passport before finally recovering his sense of humour, wishing me a good stay and hoping I had a warm jacket. I was then told that I had to clear customs at Oslo as Tromso was not an international airport, and so to claim my baggage and check it in again to Tromso. My baggage, of course, came out last (or so it seemed) and off I went scurrying to find the departure counter for Tromso. I reckoned without a customs officer who saw my male Asian features as the answer to his boredom and who checked my baggage thoroughly. He looked at his watch wryly upon being told of my need for a little hurry and told me the flight would have already left. He was right!
Changing my ticket to the next flight (leave at 1330, arrive at 1530, the evening is still ahead) and checking in did not prove to be difficult. It was while waiting that we were told, in Norwegian, that all SAS internal flights were cancelled and that those of us who insisted on going to Tromso would be put on one of the evening Braathens (one of Norway’s internal airlines) flights. The next few hours at Oslo airport had my admiration for Indian Airlines increase manifold. Large numbers of stranded people, many women traveling with small children, huge queues, no information available, no one from the airline handling the problem – SAS had no idea how to handle a screw up. Bihar Roadways – you have competition.
It was during these hours that I came to the conclusion that these Norwegians are mad, and that I would never, never be able to live in this country. Not one word of protest, not one lost temper, they braved the queues, the chaos and the shitty treatment from the airline without a murmur. One lot took out guitars and took over the airport bar. Others just hung around. “Come on, folks, lets do something about this nonsense,” I exhorted my fellow passengers for Tromso, but they said something about this not being the Norwegian way, that they expect the system to take care of them. To hell with that, do in Oslo as you would in Haryana, I said to myself and went for the nearest uniformed official and told him that I had left London early morning, I hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time and I didn’t want to hang around in any queues. He promptly handed me a food voucher, did something on the computer and said not to worry, I was already booked on the flight and when it was announced I just had to get on. I promptly pulled my fellow passengers out of the queue and, after we all got our food vouchers, a group of us settled at the airport Pizza Express and waited for our flight in peace. A small victory for the non-Norwegian way!
Well, I finally did get to Tromso that night on a delayed, packed and chaotic (but quite enjoyable) Braathens flight. We landed in the midst of a violent storm, with snow pelting down and the plane heaving from side to side. When I finally stepped out of the shelter of the airport, with the cold and the snow hitting me from all sides, I surveyed my surroundings and said ‘Ah! The Arctic!’ The tiredness of a long and irritating journey had disappeared.
There are two things that distinguish Norway from the rest of Europe. The first is the toilet style. Actually, this distinguishes every country from every other country in Europe. Why a continent that has managed to synchronize its currencies cannot standardize the location of the flush in the toilet is a matter of bewilderment to the traveler. The second is the ‘Comfort With Hotel’ in Tromso, where I stayed. Situated on the waterfront, it was within walking distance from the town center and had included in the tariff breakfasts and dinners, Norwegian style meals with plenty of cold cuts and fish, and a lounge wherein the beer was free and unlimited. There was a dispenser in the dining hall that served a variety of coffees and hot chocolates around the clock, a pleasure when coming in from the outside cold. In a country where everything is unbelievably expensive, this was quite a boon. And in addition, the receptionist was lovely – bombshell looks, a great smile and genuine charm. I greatly enjoyed the little time I spent in the hotel.
I managed to figure out the geography of Tromso gradually over the weekend. The main island is essentially a series of steep hills with a coast around them. On this coast is the airport in the west, the town center and hotspots in the east, the university in the north and some museums in the south. People stay in houses along the hillsides. The hilltops are well forested and less populated, with plenty of walking areas available and a well preserved war cemetery reminding one of the days during world war two when the town was under German occupation. The town center had two parallel main roads where all the shopping was located. The coast had a road along it, and there were roads over and along the hills and under them through an intricate tunnel system. The roads at that time were all, with the exception of the tunnels, under piles of snow and heavy-duty snow clearing machines were in operation right through my visit. Buses were the only form of public transport, with an extensive system reaching all corners of the island. The only time I used one, an oldish lady who seemed to have Mad Max as a role model was driving and she zoomed around through the town, negotiating the combination of snow, ice, curves and inclines quite expertly. Taxis were also ubiquitous. Apart from cars and their own feet, locals were moving around on their skis, skates and sledge scooters.
Tromso is not your typical city. Sunlight, that most basic of God’s gifts, is seasonal here – abundant in summer and scarce in winter – there were about 4 hours of sunlight a day when I was there and I was told that the sun was going to set in end-November and would rise again only in February. The opposite occurs in summer, when your breakfast, lunch, dinner and nocturnal raid on the refrigerator are all conducted in broad daylight. The weather itself, cold and snowy at this time, is mild for Tromso’s latitude due to the effects of warm water currents along the Norwegian Sea. The climate a little inland, say in Kautokieno in the neighbouring county of Finnmark or at similar latitudes in Canada, Alaska and Russia, is much more severe. The people are quite distinct from the Norway that most people, including Norwegians, know (and they make sure to tell you that), with a ‘northern culture’ that is probably a result of the weather and the variable daylight. Tromso is also surprisingly cosmopolitan, with locals being a mix of northerners, migrants from the southern parts of Norway, the indigenous Saami people and a small Finn minority. There is a distinct attitude among the residents that those who have traveled to the far corners of India would recognize as the ‘Dilli door hai’ syndrome - they don’t care for too much direction from Oslo. Tourists are few at this time of the year, and most of the outsiders are young Norwegian conscripts taking a break during their military service. Interestingly, the beginnings of a Russian influence are also visible, with several of the Arctic tugs in the harbour having Russian markings and shops in the town Russian insignia. Actually this is not so surprising – Tromso is the main city of the Barents Euro Arctic Region (also called BEAR) in which four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, converge, and it was a center of flourishing international trade before 1917 that is in the process of being revived.
Traveling in Scandinavia is quite distinctive from the rest of western Europe – everyone, and everyone, speaks English, and food and drink are prohibitively expensive. The ability to speak English well is seen as a sign of education, and access into nightclubs and bars in Tromso are smoothened with a bit of highbrow English in an upper class Indian accent exercised upon bouncers and maitre deis. Food-wise, the specialties here are fish and reindeer meat. The best restaurant for Norwegian cooking, should you wish to try it, is Fiske Kompani (Norwegian for Fish Company, I suppose) and it offers a bewildering array of the former. It is quite difficult to make out what is what from the descriptions on the menu, as also to pronounce the long and complicated names in the singsong way that is typical of spoken Norwegian, so I advise pointing at something and saying ‘I want that!’ If you want to impress your date, eschew the wine and swallow the food down with aquavit, a macho Scandinavian drink that is had neat. And if you want to impress the waiter as well, tell him to skip the Danish stuff and get you the real thing – a Norwegian aquavit from a bottle that has crossed the equator. A meal for two, with wine and aquavit, came for about Rs. 3,000. And yes, I did impress my date.
Which brings me to a question that a section of the readership would, no doubt, be asking - where in Tromso do you meet single women? I did expend time and effort to find out, but a long weekend is probably too short a time for research of this nature. I did find a nightclub along the waterfront, with heavy metal music, lots of people in black leather and very vicious looking bouncers. The clientele were a combination of locals, army-wallahs on a free-weekend and sailors. I wasn’t there long enough to check out the action, but I am sure that there was plenty of it. I also succeeded in gate crashing an official party for foreign students at the local university, where I had gone to the university to meet a professor in my subject area and seen the notice up for the party the next evening. A mid-career fellowship at LSE, which I was undergoing at that time, did not exactly qualify me as a student but it did arm me with an LSE identity card and I suspected (correctly) that in Arctic Norway they are unlikely to know the difference. The party had about 35 people, of whom 25 were women, the liquor was subsidized, the music was good and the lingua franca was English. Just my scene! Most of the participants were Finn, mainly students of medicine and Norwegian (the language), mostly in their middle to late twenties and, as per the law of averages, some of the women were very nice looking. I was made very welcome indeed, though I did, to some extent, have to play down the fact that I was at one of the top institutions in the world whereas they were stuck in some corner.
In the daytime, possibilities for activity in mid-November Tromso include walking and checking out the museums. Walking offers two options – along the waterfront, and up in the hills. Both are quite beautiful and can be done for long stretches. The water, a mix of the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, is blue and ice-free. The hills are well forested, and some parts are quite devoid of any obvious human inhabitation. Good walking boots, with ankle support and deep grip, are advisable as the snow in some parts is slippery and the inclines steep. Of the various museums, the university museum (for some reason located in the opposite side of the island to the university) was the one that offered interesting insights into the traditional lifestyle of the nomadic reindeer herding Sami community who are indigenous to this region, and into what the region looked like in the late nineteenth century. Quite different to now, I assure you. Production of a student identity card entitles one to a discount here. The polar museum, situated along the waterfront, offers insights into various polar expeditions, many of which set off from Tromso.
It was with great sadness that I set off to the airport on Sunday evening for an uneventful, though delayed, journey back to London via Oslo. There was only one item on my agenda that remained unfinished, and that was to see the northern lights. The Gods, unfortunately, did not oblige. Goodbye, the Arctic! Inshallah we meet again.
Being stuck in London in mid-November with a bit of cash and little to do does strange things to one’s mental balance. Some get tickets to the theatre; others try to pick up women (or men) in the fleshpots of Soho. The more unbalanced go to Upton Park to watch West Ham play football. I booked a holiday to Tromso.
If you are among the majority population, you would be, right now, asking the question ‘where the hell is Tromso?’ If, on the other hand, you are among that group of people familiar with matters within the Arctic Circle, you would know that Tromso, a thriving city of about 50,000 deep in the Norwegian Arctic zone, is also known as the ‘Paris of the North’. Located at about 70 degrees latitude on Norway’s western coast, it consists of a series of islands and advertises great scenery, art, culture, a university, museums, explorations in the arctic wilderness, the works. Which, no doubt, still begs the question ‘why Tromso? Isn’t all this stuff available in pleasanter places, obviating the necessity of crossing the Arctic circle in November?’
Precisely the point! If you are looking to visit a place which you have not been to, which no one you know has ever been to, which no one you know is ever going to go to, and which still can bring out that gleam of envy at cocktail parties, Tromso is it. Imagine a conversation at the next page three do with a diamond engulfed low neckline, well, you know, Scandinavian cruises are nice enough, all these fjords and stuff, but the fun is up north where the air has bite, the night is long and the clubs are hard. Or with one of those outdoor studs, yeah, at 10,000 feet in the Swiss Alps is OK, I guess, but if you are looking for the real thing there is little to beat the tundra in winter. Social success, and maybe a little more, guaranteed.
Such were my thoughts while boarding an (very) early SAS flight from London to Oslo, from where I was supposed to change on to a flight to Tromso. Two and a half hours to Oslo, a 45 minute changeover at Oslo airport, another two hours to Tromso and voila, lunch on the other side of the Arctic circle. Just like flying Bangalore to Delhi to Calcutta. An afternoon of rest and recreation before hitting the nightspots beckoned. Wait a minute, only 45 minutes between landing in Oslo and taking off for Tromso – would that not be a bit tight? Only if you are on Indian Airlines, I told myself, these Scandinavians do things with minute precision, no need for plan B.
The flight to Oslo was late. The queue at the immigration counter was long. The immigration officer, when I finally got in front of one, almost spluttered his coffee all over himself upon being told that an Indian was on his way to Tromso because he wanted a weekend break. “Damn the Schengen Agreement that we have to let these crazies into the country just because they have work in Bonn or Brussels!” he seemed to be muttering to himself as he examined my passport before finally recovering his sense of humour, wishing me a good stay and hoping I had a warm jacket. I was then told that I had to clear customs at Oslo as Tromso was not an international airport, and so to claim my baggage and check it in again to Tromso. My baggage, of course, came out last (or so it seemed) and off I went scurrying to find the departure counter for Tromso. I reckoned without a customs officer who saw my male Asian features as the answer to his boredom and who checked my baggage thoroughly. He looked at his watch wryly upon being told of my need for a little hurry and told me the flight would have already left. He was right!
Changing my ticket to the next flight (leave at 1330, arrive at 1530, the evening is still ahead) and checking in did not prove to be difficult. It was while waiting that we were told, in Norwegian, that all SAS internal flights were cancelled and that those of us who insisted on going to Tromso would be put on one of the evening Braathens (one of Norway’s internal airlines) flights. The next few hours at Oslo airport had my admiration for Indian Airlines increase manifold. Large numbers of stranded people, many women traveling with small children, huge queues, no information available, no one from the airline handling the problem – SAS had no idea how to handle a screw up. Bihar Roadways – you have competition.
It was during these hours that I came to the conclusion that these Norwegians are mad, and that I would never, never be able to live in this country. Not one word of protest, not one lost temper, they braved the queues, the chaos and the shitty treatment from the airline without a murmur. One lot took out guitars and took over the airport bar. Others just hung around. “Come on, folks, lets do something about this nonsense,” I exhorted my fellow passengers for Tromso, but they said something about this not being the Norwegian way, that they expect the system to take care of them. To hell with that, do in Oslo as you would in Haryana, I said to myself and went for the nearest uniformed official and told him that I had left London early morning, I hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time and I didn’t want to hang around in any queues. He promptly handed me a food voucher, did something on the computer and said not to worry, I was already booked on the flight and when it was announced I just had to get on. I promptly pulled my fellow passengers out of the queue and, after we all got our food vouchers, a group of us settled at the airport Pizza Express and waited for our flight in peace. A small victory for the non-Norwegian way!
Well, I finally did get to Tromso that night on a delayed, packed and chaotic (but quite enjoyable) Braathens flight. We landed in the midst of a violent storm, with snow pelting down and the plane heaving from side to side. When I finally stepped out of the shelter of the airport, with the cold and the snow hitting me from all sides, I surveyed my surroundings and said ‘Ah! The Arctic!’ The tiredness of a long and irritating journey had disappeared.
There are two things that distinguish Norway from the rest of Europe. The first is the toilet style. Actually, this distinguishes every country from every other country in Europe. Why a continent that has managed to synchronize its currencies cannot standardize the location of the flush in the toilet is a matter of bewilderment to the traveler. The second is the ‘Comfort With Hotel’ in Tromso, where I stayed. Situated on the waterfront, it was within walking distance from the town center and had included in the tariff breakfasts and dinners, Norwegian style meals with plenty of cold cuts and fish, and a lounge wherein the beer was free and unlimited. There was a dispenser in the dining hall that served a variety of coffees and hot chocolates around the clock, a pleasure when coming in from the outside cold. In a country where everything is unbelievably expensive, this was quite a boon. And in addition, the receptionist was lovely – bombshell looks, a great smile and genuine charm. I greatly enjoyed the little time I spent in the hotel.
I managed to figure out the geography of Tromso gradually over the weekend. The main island is essentially a series of steep hills with a coast around them. On this coast is the airport in the west, the town center and hotspots in the east, the university in the north and some museums in the south. People stay in houses along the hillsides. The hilltops are well forested and less populated, with plenty of walking areas available and a well preserved war cemetery reminding one of the days during world war two when the town was under German occupation. The town center had two parallel main roads where all the shopping was located. The coast had a road along it, and there were roads over and along the hills and under them through an intricate tunnel system. The roads at that time were all, with the exception of the tunnels, under piles of snow and heavy-duty snow clearing machines were in operation right through my visit. Buses were the only form of public transport, with an extensive system reaching all corners of the island. The only time I used one, an oldish lady who seemed to have Mad Max as a role model was driving and she zoomed around through the town, negotiating the combination of snow, ice, curves and inclines quite expertly. Taxis were also ubiquitous. Apart from cars and their own feet, locals were moving around on their skis, skates and sledge scooters.
Tromso is not your typical city. Sunlight, that most basic of God’s gifts, is seasonal here – abundant in summer and scarce in winter – there were about 4 hours of sunlight a day when I was there and I was told that the sun was going to set in end-November and would rise again only in February. The opposite occurs in summer, when your breakfast, lunch, dinner and nocturnal raid on the refrigerator are all conducted in broad daylight. The weather itself, cold and snowy at this time, is mild for Tromso’s latitude due to the effects of warm water currents along the Norwegian Sea. The climate a little inland, say in Kautokieno in the neighbouring county of Finnmark or at similar latitudes in Canada, Alaska and Russia, is much more severe. The people are quite distinct from the Norway that most people, including Norwegians, know (and they make sure to tell you that), with a ‘northern culture’ that is probably a result of the weather and the variable daylight. Tromso is also surprisingly cosmopolitan, with locals being a mix of northerners, migrants from the southern parts of Norway, the indigenous Saami people and a small Finn minority. There is a distinct attitude among the residents that those who have traveled to the far corners of India would recognize as the ‘Dilli door hai’ syndrome - they don’t care for too much direction from Oslo. Tourists are few at this time of the year, and most of the outsiders are young Norwegian conscripts taking a break during their military service. Interestingly, the beginnings of a Russian influence are also visible, with several of the Arctic tugs in the harbour having Russian markings and shops in the town Russian insignia. Actually this is not so surprising – Tromso is the main city of the Barents Euro Arctic Region (also called BEAR) in which four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, converge, and it was a center of flourishing international trade before 1917 that is in the process of being revived.
Traveling in Scandinavia is quite distinctive from the rest of western Europe – everyone, and everyone, speaks English, and food and drink are prohibitively expensive. The ability to speak English well is seen as a sign of education, and access into nightclubs and bars in Tromso are smoothened with a bit of highbrow English in an upper class Indian accent exercised upon bouncers and maitre deis. Food-wise, the specialties here are fish and reindeer meat. The best restaurant for Norwegian cooking, should you wish to try it, is Fiske Kompani (Norwegian for Fish Company, I suppose) and it offers a bewildering array of the former. It is quite difficult to make out what is what from the descriptions on the menu, as also to pronounce the long and complicated names in the singsong way that is typical of spoken Norwegian, so I advise pointing at something and saying ‘I want that!’ If you want to impress your date, eschew the wine and swallow the food down with aquavit, a macho Scandinavian drink that is had neat. And if you want to impress the waiter as well, tell him to skip the Danish stuff and get you the real thing – a Norwegian aquavit from a bottle that has crossed the equator. A meal for two, with wine and aquavit, came for about Rs. 3,000. And yes, I did impress my date.
Which brings me to a question that a section of the readership would, no doubt, be asking - where in Tromso do you meet single women? I did expend time and effort to find out, but a long weekend is probably too short a time for research of this nature. I did find a nightclub along the waterfront, with heavy metal music, lots of people in black leather and very vicious looking bouncers. The clientele were a combination of locals, army-wallahs on a free-weekend and sailors. I wasn’t there long enough to check out the action, but I am sure that there was plenty of it. I also succeeded in gate crashing an official party for foreign students at the local university, where I had gone to the university to meet a professor in my subject area and seen the notice up for the party the next evening. A mid-career fellowship at LSE, which I was undergoing at that time, did not exactly qualify me as a student but it did arm me with an LSE identity card and I suspected (correctly) that in Arctic Norway they are unlikely to know the difference. The party had about 35 people, of whom 25 were women, the liquor was subsidized, the music was good and the lingua franca was English. Just my scene! Most of the participants were Finn, mainly students of medicine and Norwegian (the language), mostly in their middle to late twenties and, as per the law of averages, some of the women were very nice looking. I was made very welcome indeed, though I did, to some extent, have to play down the fact that I was at one of the top institutions in the world whereas they were stuck in some corner.
In the daytime, possibilities for activity in mid-November Tromso include walking and checking out the museums. Walking offers two options – along the waterfront, and up in the hills. Both are quite beautiful and can be done for long stretches. The water, a mix of the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, is blue and ice-free. The hills are well forested, and some parts are quite devoid of any obvious human inhabitation. Good walking boots, with ankle support and deep grip, are advisable as the snow in some parts is slippery and the inclines steep. Of the various museums, the university museum (for some reason located in the opposite side of the island to the university) was the one that offered interesting insights into the traditional lifestyle of the nomadic reindeer herding Sami community who are indigenous to this region, and into what the region looked like in the late nineteenth century. Quite different to now, I assure you. Production of a student identity card entitles one to a discount here. The polar museum, situated along the waterfront, offers insights into various polar expeditions, many of which set off from Tromso.
It was with great sadness that I set off to the airport on Sunday evening for an uneventful, though delayed, journey back to London via Oslo. There was only one item on my agenda that remained unfinished, and that was to see the northern lights. The Gods, unfortunately, did not oblige. Goodbye, the Arctic! Inshallah we meet again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
