SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS QUARTERLY
TRAVEL QUARTERLY SPRING 2016
N R E U Y O S J SE EING TH E WORLD IN A N E W LIG HT
Rajasthan palaces • Kerala’s Christians • Henna tattoos • Darjeeling’s antique train Best eats • India’s Jurassic Park • A skeptic’s journey • Rites of color • Ancient crafts
SPRING 2016 INDIA
India
Subhead
It’s easy to be green during Holi, India’s spring festival, when revelers douse everyone and anyone, including this Rajasthani villager, with colored powder and paint. PHOTO: STEVE MCCURRY, MAGNUM PHOTOS
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O India’s rainbow hues hold many shades of meaning
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By Victoria Finlay
y o u l a n d i n i n d i a a n y t i m e i n l at e February or March, it’s wise to check the dates of the annual Holi festival, and bring a spare set of
clothes. That’s because for a few days in spring, people crowd the streets and splash brilliantly colored dyes on anyone walking by. It’s hard to avoid the fun—and paint—unless you stay inside or look menacing enough to discourage the custom. ¶ “Watch out, madam!” said my taxi driver in Amritsar as we drove through a melee of young people pelting each other with powder. ¶ “The colors never come out of your clothes,” he said. “And you might be having purple hair for many days. It is a complete liability.” ¶ I did a quick check. I was wearing black, a color rarely seen in India. In the caste, or “varna,” system (which in Sanskrit translates as the “color” system), it is usually associated with the lowest categories of social classes, and can be viewed as unlucky. A Forbes study in 2009, which compared corporate logo colors in India with international brands, suggested that black is the one color that companies in India assiduously avoid. I was happy for my clothes to be permanently splattered. ¶ “Can we stop?” I asked. “Or will I make your taxi dirty when I get back in?” ¶ “No, madam, I have a cloth for just this exact purpose,” he said. “And I have some powder I bought for my children. You can have some gladly, to join in our customs.”
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A faith as old as the Apostles Christianity came to Kerala as early as the first century By Paul Zacharia • Photographs by Lynn Johnson
The firsT haT i ever saw was worn by Father Lawrence, an elderly priest who said Mass for the rubber-plantation workers in the Kerala village where I spent a Catholic childhood. When he came to our house for coffee, he lifted the curiously rounded hat and bowed with grave courtesy, a gesture I remember vividly because we did not know A procession during St. Thomas’s feast day in Paravur, Kerala to honor the Apostle believed to have brought Christianity to Kerala in a.d. 52. Since then, Christian and Hindu populations have co-existed as underscored by a local poster (above) showing Jesus and Ganesha.
of such things then. Years later I would learn that it was a pith helmet. ¶ We got to know Father Lawrence because attending his ramshackle chapel near our family farm was far easier than enduring the hilly, one-hour walk to our parish church. The traditional-minded in our parish frowned upon this because the plantation church followed the Latin rite, not the Syrian rite, although both are Catholic. As for us children, none of this mattered in the least. At the plantation
LYNN JOHNSON IS REPRESENTED BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE. POSTER PHOTO: FRANS LANTING, NG CREATIVE
SPRING 2016 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 59
ATLAS OF EATING
Comfort foods on the road By Sudip Mazumdar
home. We sat on a rope cot called
Photographs by Arko Datto
a charpoi, surrounded by similar
W
cots occupied by soot-covered hen I was 17, I left home
drivers. Before we knew it, we
in search of adventure,
were served hot tandoori roti
without telling my
(handmade flatbread made of
hardworking parents. I wanted to
unleavened wheat flour baked in a
be like Huck Finn, free and spunky,
coal-fired oven called a tandoor)
creating my own path. The journey
and steaming hot spicy dal (lentils)
began with a short walk from our
on steel plates that were set on
modest, rented house about 140
a wooden plank across the cot.
miles (225 kilometers) west of
Another plate of raw diced onions
Kolkata (Calcutta) to the centuries-
and whole green chilies was placed
old, two-lane Grand Trunk Road,
in the middle. We ate silently,
stretching from eastern India all the
intermittently licking the thick
way to Kabul in Afghanistan.
dal off our fingers. After paying
With only a few rupees in my
for the dinner, the driver, perhaps
pocket, I hitched a ride on a coal
detecting my nervousness, took
truck, driven by a kindly middle-
pity on me. “Go back home,” he said.
aged man traveling west. From the
“Your parents might be worried. And
passenger seat I looked out onto
study. Or else you’ll end up being
the opencast mines and smoke-
a useless, illiterate driver like me,
billowing factories that dotted
living and dying on the road.” Huck
the area. Trucks plied this main
Finn faded in my imagination. The
artery around the clock. There
driver asked a fellow trucker to give
especially since the economic
of Murthal, a popular
were hardly any cars then. As
me a ride back. I accepted.
reforms of the early 1990s, dhabas
stopping place for weary
darkness descended, we pulled up
known in India as dhabas. As India has progressed,
Brightly colored trucks parked near the village
have changed too. What were
travelers in search of a
next to a dimly lit shack for dinner.
Whenever I remember the kindness
once just dusty joints for sleepy
good meal; aloo paratha
Several other trucks were parked
and wisdom of that anonymous
truckers have become throbbing
(traditional wheat bread
in the shadows. A big, leafy tree
driver, I also recollect something
highway destinations, some with
stuffed with spicy
stood silently under a starry sky,
else: the otherworldly taste of
air-conditioned dining areas, clean
potato), served at a dhaba
overhanging a tire-repair shanty.
that simple, delicious meal of dal
washrooms, and an array of food
in Uttar Pradesh.
The driver and his assistant
That was more than 45 years ago.
and roti served in a truck-stop
choices, including of course dal and
invited me to join them. I was
hut of bamboo and thatch, one of
roti. The transformation reflects
famished, and already missing
countless such roadside restaurants
the changing food habits, mores,
70 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS SPRING 2016
and middle-class preferences of
kaleidoscopic images that assault
21st-century Indians. “Dhabas
the traveler on the Indian highway.
remain a window into our culture
A dizzying reel of life passes
and customs,” says Mayur Sharma,
through a car window here: It’s
a popular author and television
quite common to happen across
host for food shows. “They are the
horrifying head-on collisions, or
closest to what you get at Indian
trucks lying belly-up, or crushed
homes, where great recipes are
animals in the middle of the road.
handed down through generations.”
A merry wedding procession may block a thoroughfare at one
Yet dhabas are not simply convenient restaurants for a tasty
place, while children play cricket
bite. At their best, they are places
dangerously close to speeding
to catch a breath and process the
vehicles at another. Villagers will
SPRING 2016 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 71
‘This is their livelihood their respect and dignity’ An interview with Jaya Jaitly, author of the Crafts Atlas of India By Simon Worrall Born in Shimla, in the foothillS of the himalaya, the daughter of an Indian civil servant in the British raj, Jaya Jaitly has lived many lives. She spent her childhood in Belgium, Burma, and Japan, graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, ran a camp for Sikh riot victims, and became the high-profile president of Samata, a political party with socialist leanings. Running like a red thread through her life has also been a passion for India’s traditional crafts, helping them find viable markets and preserving their heritage. Her coffee-table book the Crafts Atlas of India is a love letter to the longstanding skills that make India’s crafts unique and colorful. She is also one of India’s Jaya Jaitly has fought for the survival of traditional crafts such as
foremost champions of the sari. Speaking from her home in Delhi, she explains why the sari is the quintessential Indian garment, how the caste system helped preserve Indian crafts, and why some artists are considered descendants of the lord of art.
the earthen pots, pans,
You have been a leading politician in India,
planters, piggy banks, and
a trade union activist, prominently married
is a craft-rich state. The craftspeople were very iso-
pradip—oil lamps—made
and divorced. Tell us how you fell in love with
lated, however, and not being noticed or given any
by the 55-year-old potter
crafts—and why their preservation matters.
advice. My mother was very active in social work.
After I got married, I moved to Kashmir, which
I fell in love with them without knowing it
She was always helping the poor and needy, espe-
(Calcutta) Hindu from the
when I was very young and living in Japan. My
cially in hospitals. So I combined my interest in
Kumhar caste (right).
father was the Indian ambassador to Japan and
aesthetics with improving the life of the maker of
loved beautiful things, like woven mats and shibori
that beautiful art.
Shyamal Pal, a Kolkata
fabrics (an ancient Japanese method of tie-dye). It
The preservation of crafts matters because for
must have formed my aesthetic interests and love
many people, this is their livelihood. It is their re-
for handmade things.
spect and dignity, as well, so preserving the people
In Kerala, where we come from, the lifestyle is
and their lives means preserving their crafts and
very simple. There is not much furniture; we ate
heritage. Much of India’s heritage would be lost if
on banana leaves off the floor. I didn’t come from
people lost their traditional skills. After we won our
a highly decorated house; everyone wears sim-
freedom from Great Britain, we needed to ground
ple white clothes in that region. So the simplicity
ourselves in our own histories, our own culture.
and beauty of things have been ingrained into me instinctively. 78 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS SPRING 2016
It was crucial for me as a socioeconomic exercise; you could call it a hidden political exercise. Early on, PHOTOS: COURTESY OF DASTKARI HAAT SAMITI; SUPRANOV DASH (RIGHT)
FALL 2015 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 79
NORTH TO THE
MOUNTAINS A grandson retraces adventurer Francis K. I. Baird’s mysterious trek to the Himalaya
FALL 2015 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 85
By Scott Wallace • Photographs by Arko Datto
T
he weather-beaten door swung open with little resistance, and I followed Rinzing Chewang into the unlit bungalow. “Watch out!” he said in accented English, and I dodged a gaping hole in the floor just
in time. We crossed a high-ceilinged parlor, where a framed poster of the Buddha, draped in a white silk khata, gazed at us from a soot-tinged mantel. ¶ At the end of a dim hallway, Rinzing pushed open another door and stood back. “This is the bedroom,” he announced, as if he were showing me to my quarters. A pair of twin beds, the room’s only furnishings, stood naked, mattresses uncovered, pushed up against a dull yellow clapboard wall. Gray light seeped in through a grimy window. Walker Evans’s Alabama sharecroppers might have lived here. Who actually had stayed here, I’d recently
would have been more comfortably furnished.
discovered, was a tall Scotsman of rugged good
Now it was all but abandoned behind a locked gate,
looks and incurable wanderlust. Francis K. I. Baird.
evidently slated for demolition.
My maternal grandfather. In 1931, he and fellow
My mother was not yet five when she waved
adventurer Jill Cossley-Batt journeyed to this
goodbye to her father as he boarded an ocean lin-
remote Himalayan village, called Lachen, in North
er on the Hudson River in 1930, bound for India.
Sikkim, near the border of Tibet. Somewhere in
He promised to return rich and famous, flush with
these borderlands, the couple claimed to have
tales of wonderment to recount to his adoring
discovered a “lost tribe” of cave dwellers living high
daughter, Flora. It was a promise he did not keep.
up a mountain wall. The clan folk were unsullied
Ten years passed before my mother next saw him,
by Western avarice, the adventurers proclaimed,
in a chance encounter on the New York waterfront.
and they lived well past the age of 100.
The meeting was stiff and perfunctory, over in a mat-
At the time, Lachen was an isolated settlement
ter of minutes. She never laid eyes on him again. Until
composed almost entirely of self-sufficient indige-
the end, her father remained a man of unanswered
nous farmers and herders with strong familial ties
questions, a purveyor of mystery and source of life-
to Tibet. Hanging on the lip of a ridge amid thun-
long bereavement. She went to her grave without
dering brooks and plunging, fir-covered slopes,
knowing what had become of him. She knew not
the village still retains much of its bucolic charm.
where he died, when he died, or even if he’d died.
Along the rutted dirt road that serves as its main
“Your grandfather would have slept in this
thoroughfare, Baird and Batt found shelter in this
room,” said Rinzing, snapping me back to the mo-
so-called dak bungalow. Resembling a rough-hewn
ment. I pulled back the window’s thin curtain and
English cottage, the structure was one of dozens, if
looked out on a stack of rain-soaked firewood and,
not hundreds, of such peak-roofed bungalows built
beyond it, mountain slopes rising sharply and van-
in the time of the raj to billet officers along military
ishing in a swirl of mist. This would have been the
roads and postal routes spanning the vast reaches
same view that Baird beheld each morning during
of British India. Back in Baird’s day, the bungalow
his stay here so long ago.
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Sikkim
Ghum
Darjeeling
Darjeeling Himalayan Railroad Kurseong
N E PA L
We s t B e n g a l
AREA D E TA I L E D
Siliguri
BANGLADESH
In 1931, Francis K. I. Baird set off with fellow adventurer Jill Cossley-Batt (left) for the mountains beyond Darjeeling. The letter to Baird’s wife was written from Calcutta, the journey’s start. “Agony Point” (above), north of Tingharia, is one of three railway loops along the route.
LETTER AND PHOTO: SCOTT WALLACE COLLECTION; ARCHIVAL IMAGE: BRITISH EMPIRE AND COMMONWEALTH MUSEUM/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
SPRING 2016 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 87