No Show Drama

I had been driven out of my comfortable, if shabby, room by a disgusting cockroach! Worse than that was the fact that I was driven straight into the arms of the Rickshaw mafia. I had been trying to avoid them. I couldn't be bothered to put up much of a struggle and opted for one of the competitors for my trade.

I can't remember what the time was but it was early evening sometime. It could have been getting dark which tends not to be a long drawn affair. I asked the driver to take me to the Raj Mandir.

The Raj Mandir was then reputed to be the largest and second best cinema in Asia. This had always struck me as being an odd description. It was never accompanied by any hint of where the best cinema in Asia was. Anyway it would seem that things have changed since then. A review I found at AsiaRooms.com says it is now "widely acclaimed as the largest cinema hall in Rajasthan, and one of the best in the country". That's a heck of a fall in status. Cinema construction must have been elevated to a new plane if what was once the largest cinema in Asia was now only the largest in Rajasthan. The standards of interior decoration must have also improved to unheard of opulence if it is now only one of the best cinema's in India. I quote the whole review from AsiaRooms.com below:

"Movie going in India is a popular experience as Mumbai’s Bollywood is the second largest film maker in the world, second only to Hong Kong. In Jaipur there are a very few operational theatres. However Raj Mandir Movie Theatre, Jaipur is widely acclaimed as the largest cinema hall in Rajasthan, and one of the best in the country.

Raj Mandir Movie Theatre, Jaipur is situated on the Mirza Ishmail Road (M. I. Road). The lobby is stunning with chandeliers, pink wall and balcony lighting, reminding you of fantasy palaces. The theater also incense of different blends at occasional points in the film.

The Raj Mandir Movie Theatre in Jaipur opened on 1st June 1976 and the first film to be shown here was Charas. It was designed by architect W.M. Namjoshi in a sleek, modern style with the spirit of the new age.

The exterior of Raj Mandir movie Theatre, Jaipur is adorned with asymmetrical curves and shapes with stars, illuminated by hidden lights at night. The top of the building has the theatre’s name, shouting out proudly ‘The Showplace of the Nation - Experience the Excellence’.

The reception has a number of glittering chandeliers hanging in domes from the ceiling. The auditorium is spectacularly decorated with indirect lighting of changing colors hidden behind the plaster troughs of walls and ceilings. The theatre is also equipped to screen 70 mm films.

The name of this gigantic theatre can be translated as King Temple. Here only one movie is shown at a time and there are 4 showings per day. There are different levels of tickets available topped by the Diamond tickets which allows you to sit in the balcony far above crowds. Besides having your own entrance to the hall, the Diamond ticket allows you to have your own lounge area, bathroom and snacks bar.

Even if you do not understand the language of the film screened, you will be entertained anyway by the emotions involved in the movie and of course the crowd. It will be a wonderful experience for you, tempting you to sing, dance and shout with the crowds".

So that's why I was going there. I wanted to experience a Bollywood blockbuster, the first I would ever have seen, in a cinema that would do it justice and give me everything to make the experience as complete as possible.

The picture below is not mine. It is from Webshots travel. I don't get it, the photos can be shared and embedded and emailed even though they are not yours, and it's OK. So here is smath101's picture of the architectural wonder of the world of cinema.



Having rather built up an expectation for a special experience, when we got there the last showing of whatever was being screened had already started and I decided to put off the going to the Raj Mandir until the following day. My notes are a bit sparse as usual. They just say "Abortive trip to Raj Mandir".

I can only assume I got the rickshaw driver to take me back to the station. By that time I was his property. He had invited me to breakfast the following morning. Why not? I was on my own in the city and if I didn't have anyone to talk to at all it was going to be quite lonely.

The illness of a couple of days previously had taken a lot out of me. Without a note to remind me I can only guess that I retired to my room at the railway station, twiddled the tuning dial on the radio to pick up the World Service, twiddled a little something to promote relaxation and fend off nausea (in case it should come back) and went to sleep.

Pushkar to Jaipur

My notes are characteristically succinct: "P.O. Bus to Ajmer Train to Jaipur arrive late".

In my final packing I began to get a little concerned about the amount of "stuff" I was accumulating. I mean recreational combustible stuff as opposed to other stuff which was, of course also becoming a problem.

So far as that was concerned I made a list of my latest acquisitions on one of the postcards I wrote home. Somehow in just a fortnight since posting the wicker basket full of stuff from Delhi I had picked up an appliqué bed spread (camels and other animals), two ethnic blankets (the camel blanket and a rather more colourful one), appliqué cushion covers and embroidered cushion covers, the kind with little round mirrors in, a miniature painting of an elephant (which come to think of it, I think I may have bought in Pushkar after the black market for-ex deal) and, of course, the elephant pictured a few posts ago. On top of that I had had some shirts made up in Jaisalmer and had picked up those hippie backpacks, purses and chillum covers a couple of days ago. My postcard tries to justify the purchases on the basis that I would have to buy stuff upon my return so why not do it now where things I might need are cheap? My friend Rudiger Schliffke's knowing smile and the prophecy he made in South Eastern Turkey that I would find buying things in India impossible to resist came to mind. All this stuff had to be sent home.

No, the other "stuff" was becoming an embarrassment too. After a 6 week period in Turkey during which in total I had had nothing more intoxicating than literally a few bottles of beer (more than a couple but not as much as a handful), things were going downhill fast. What had I got? Well, there was that rather hard stuff from Kashmir, the sticky black stuff Hookmah got for me in Jaisalmer, a bagful of dry bhang and now a half tola of finest quality Parvati Chars from Himanchal Pradesh. I threw away the bhang.

So I went to the Post Office and sent another parcel home and posted the various letters and cards I had written over the last few days.

Then I checked out of the Sai Baba Guest House. My initially over attentive host, the young former Brahmin monk, was nowhere to be seen. Since the minute I caved in and took half the tola off his hands he had left me to my own devices.

I'd come up from Ajmer in some kind of van but my notes say "bus" so I suppose it must have been a bus I returned on. It is not a long journey and I think the bus must have gone straight to the Railway Station because otherwise there may have been some small adventure between getting off the bus and arriving there. At Ajmer I simply exercised my inalienable right as a Indrail Pass holder to board the next train to Jaipur and sit in First Class. It was not a sleeper but the journey took the best part of the day and arrived in Jaipur around dusk.

I was still not exactly recovered from the illness the day before and I decided to book the night at the Railway Station where there was accommodation for First Class travelers at exceptionally reasonable rates. The Station at Jaipur boasted hot water! That, and the fact that it meant I did not have to cart my backpack and the latest collection of souvenirs into the middle of the city (and back again the next day) were two of the reasons that I decided to check in there. Another reason was the Rickshaw mafia outside the station. I couldn't face the hassle.

The room was really quite sizeable and not only had a small wash basin inside the room but also had an en-suite shower cubicle. It was shabby but nonetheless pretty good. I took a shower. If I am correct in my recollection there was no hot water in the shower but there was a water heater above the wash basin. So after my shower I decided to have a shave.

One of the most essential pieces of equipment every back-packer should have is a universal sink plug. I had read that before I set off and very soon realised why this advice is given. Practically none of the places that I ever stayed in had a plug for the wash basin. I had patted myself on the back more than once for having followed the advice and having bought two of them to bring with me. The advice you don't get is how to remember to take the plug with you when you check out. I had already lost both my plugs! I very much regretted this during the course of my shave and realised there is more than one reason to have a plug for a basin.

The water heater contraption was like something that might have been found in a very cheap London bedsit. Antiquated and decidedly dodgy. It looked downright dangerous and would have been condemned in an instant by a modern day housing officer. Although it did work it didn't produce a very great volume of hot water. On the other hand what it did produce was extremely hot. I ran some and managed to get some on my face without scalding myself. I applied the stick of shaving soap and then stuck my shaving brush under the hot water before lathering up the soap up my face. I then rinsed the razor in the very hot water and began to shave. It was good to shave using hot water. Every now and then I would look down and rinse the razor and then return to watch what I was doing in the small mirror above the sink.

I had practically finished and was rinsing the razor when I noticed something coming out of the wash basin's plug hole! It was an absolutely enormous cockroach. I mean it was huge! It gave me quite a start. I suppose it was not quite as much a surprise to me than suddenly having scalding hot water sent down the rarely used plughole where the cockroach clearly lived, but I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Cockroaches are disgusting and this one desperately wanted to get out of the sink. It wasn't very nice to see it in the sink but at least I knew where the brute was while it was there. Cockroaches are not spiders and can easily escape a sink. Within a fraction of a second the bastard thing was out and on the ground. I was hopping around because I did not want it to run over my bare feet. Before showering I had probably succumbed to the temptation of a medicinal smoke (to vaccinate against nausea that might have recurred following my illness, you understand) so I was a tad uncoordinated and exciteable. I swear at one point I was holding the monster at bay with a small stool which I was also using to try and kill it. I think it escaped somewhere.

I don't know where it escaped and that helped galvanise me into going out. I couldn't stay in the room not knowing where the nasty insect was lurking.

Short Term Liquidity Problems

In the middle of the night I woke up feeling decidedly unwell. I was going to be sick! Oh my god! I was going to be sick!! Like, immediately!!! I had to make it to the toilet. I staggered out of the room and stumbled in the dark across the garden towards the toilets. I was dizzy and retching. I made it just and was violently ill. It was no relief. Almost as soon as I had emptied my stomach that way I had to turn around and squat. God it was awful. I think I spent a few minutes alternately being sick and having diarrhoea. I don't remember going back to the room but I must have. I went to sleep and when I woke I felt very weak indeed.

I tried to think what could have caused it. It was a combination of things, I think. The cream cheese and garlic with bread was not prepared in a way that would satisfy any environmental health inspector. Then again I had not had anything to eat like that for a while and perhaps my stomach was not ready for it. I had eaten an enormous meal the night before. Perhaps I had just over eaten. Then again, I had eaten the food Indian style using my fingers rather than a spoon. Perhaps I had poisoned myself.

Whatever it was I wasn't up to eating anything. I had some Mr Pik drinking water and mixed it with some of the re hydration powders I had picked up in Selcuk near Ephesus. I sipped it until I felt strong enough to wash and go out to look for a pharmacy to buy some more powders, a lot of them.

I have located a picture of the Guest House pictured from the Street. I think it is the same one.



It doesn't look very imposing does it? It wasn't. Just outside the door you can see concrete. That probably covers the sewer that runs down the street. I remember coming out of the door and looking across the street where I saw a young mother standing on the sort of platform bridge outside her front door dangling one of her children over the open sewer that ran past the entrance to the house while the toddler produced a couple of turds directly into it. India was generally quite unsanitary and that is very much an understatement.

I don't remember exactly whether it was in Pushkar that I began to understand why Muslims and other religious groups consider pork to be unclean. If you follow the open sewers out to the edge of a village or town you begin to notice small hairy pigs trotting around briskly, foraging for whatever they could. You guessed it. So far as I could tell they were living waste disposal specialists. I don't know whether anyone was responsible for looking after the pigs.

I found a pharmacy and invested in a plentiful supply of re hydration powders got a similar supply of drinking water and and retired back to the room where I spent the day lying down, listening to the World Service on the radio, gradually sipping the solution. I probably also took a tablet to basically paralyse my gut. I forget the name of the tablet tight now. It works. I wrote postcards and letters and got my gear together. I decided that what I had seen in Pushkar was enough. I was leaving the next day.

Succumbing to Pressure

After successfully achieving my objective of changing money and wary about how much I might persuade myself I could afford to buy if I did any more shopping I went to the RS restaurant and sat downstairs. I ordered a sort of cream cheese sandwich that looked and tasted great. I did notice that whenever the guy who was preparing the food left his station the table would be raided by little stripey squirrel like animals and birds.

I went back to the Sai Baba Guest House and my host was immediately keen to know if I had now got enough cash to purchase the tola. I compromised on half the tola and that seemed to be OK. I retired to my room, probably sampled some and listened to the radio while I sorted out and packed away my latest purchases.

I went out to dinner at the R S Restaurant. It was so cheap. The menu was also superb (exclusively vegetarian, of course) and I ordered a few dishes and a few others. What I got was a huge amount of food! Some of the dishes I had thought were probably side dishes were main course size. I ate as much as I could and that was probably too much. I did as well as I could to cover the fact that I had over ordered. When I asked for the bill the waiter came and identified each of the dishes I had on the table and wrote a column of single digit figures. I could see what they were and when the list was complete I told him the total was 22 rupees. The waiter looked at me incredulously and took out a calculator. Within a few seconds he confirmed the total was 22 rupees and said in an impressed tome "Good calculation, Baba!".

And so I retired to bed.

More Sales Techniques and the Black Market

Pushkar isn't a very big place. It is a festival venue and the feeling in the town was strange. People weren't quite as pushy as they were in some other places. the Camel Festival had taken place some weeks before and I dare say the place would have been teeming. But it was quiet and the shopkeepers seemed to be content with what they had made in the last few weeks.

I have no pictures. It is a shame because I only retain a feeling by way of a memory of the street scene. I seem to remember that the shops were set slightly higher up than the the actual street level. I was attracted to a shop which appeared to being manned by a small boy who was seated cross legged in the front with piles of mechandise around him.

He was a very engaging young man and many years more senior in his manner than I expected. His conversational technique belied his years. Everything in his shop was absurdly cheap. It was just fun stuff made of fabric but it was colourful. I bought some chillum pipe cases, purses and appliqué hippie-style cloth backpacks. Before I knew it I had blown a couple of pounds or so. I mentioned to the young man that I needed to change money and wondered whether he could direct me to the nearest bank.

Here the young salesman astounded me. I swear that if he was 10 years old he wouldn't have passed for it. Despite his infancy he had a remarkably firm grasp of foreign exchange rates and money dealing. It was quite clear that this young man could arrange a much better rate than I might get at the Canara Bank.

When I was in India the Rupee was not traded internationally. It was impossible to purchase Indian currency outside the country and impossible to trade it in for any other currency outside the country. There was therefore no point in having any cash left over at the end of a visit to India. There was an official exchange rate which I think was about 35 Rupees for a Pound. The young salesman told me that he could get me something over 40 Rupees for a Pound. I told him that I had heard about rates a little higher than that in Delhi. With all the polite condescension that one might have expected from a man say 10 or 15 years my senior this small boy looked at me kindly and said "This is Pushkar, Baba. This is not Delhi."

A cup of chai cost one rupee so getting five free cups of tea for every pound exchanged at the black market rate meant that even though the rate was not the best that might have been obtained it was still worth agreeing.

The Lonely Planet Guide gave readers advice about the possible dangers of exchanging money on the black market and there were plenty of stories about travelers who had ended up on the wrong end of a scam.

Since there were currency controls there were doubtless limits on the amount of "hard" foreign currency that might be held by nationals. Whatever the reason there was a big demand for foreign currency and the bigger the bill the better the rate. Even travelers' cheques fetched a better rate. I have a theory about Bollywood films that is linked to the black market for foreign currency that I will refer to later.

The stories of people being ripped off arise because it is is of course illegal to exchange money on the street. On arrival in India there are currency declaration forms that you had to complete. If I remember you had to declare any valuable belongings too and I seem to remember that the advice was to keep all foreign exchange receipts in case on leaving the country you were asked to account for what happened to the currency and belongings you came with.

The main thing to keep in mind is that you should never part with your money until you have the equivalent in exchange. In some places there is plenty of opportunity to change money. People might call out to you "Change money?" as you pass. This wasn't the case in Pushkar. In big cities the pressure and therefore the risks were greater. The horror stories usually involved a great deal of stupidity and greed. Tempted by extraordinary rates travelers would do deals for their entire budgets. The cloak and dagger element would mean that complicated arrangements for the exchange would be made.

Those who parted with their money before seeing the cash wold never see the foreign exchange agent again. He would simply disappear pretending to be back soon making all kinds of reassuring promises. Waiting in the out of the way rendez-vous it would eventually dawn on the unwary that the man was never coming back and a robbery had just, well, not just but some, say, 30 minutes earlier, taken place. Plenty of time had passed by then for the opportunist con man to have melted away never to be found.

In other cases the illegality of the deal would be stressed and the need to make sure the transaction was not observed was emphasised. The details of the transaction would be finalised. The traveler would not part with any money but would have to wait somewhere out of sight. When the con man returned the traveler would be ushered down and alleyway and a bag of notes would be handed over for the dollar bills/pound notes but then the con man would suddenly tell the traveler to run because the Police had been spotted. The traveler would run in one direction clutching the paper bag and the con man would scarper in the other direction. Only when the traveler realised that he was no longer being followed would he look into the bag to find that although the first few notes were real the rest of the bundle was made up of newspaper. Again, the con man's escape was complete before the theft was even discovered.

In both cases there is no-one to complain to. The transaction being illegal, it isn't an option to report the matter to the Police.

I am very pleased to say that my experience did not involve any particular skulduggery. I was simply left in charge of the shop while my young friend went off to get the rupees. I wasn't changing very much, maybe £100. The young man came back, the exchange took place and both of us were happy. He had doubtless made a better deal for the £100 than I got and for my part I got a better deal that I would have got at the bank. This meant the shopping I had done in his shop was "free" on the basis that what I had spent was less than the advantage I had gained on the currency deal.

I was liquid again and the deal on the money had rejigged the budget to compensate for the "dent" making puja the day before too. I was ahead, but not for long.

Sales Techniques

I probably woke early the next morning. I had a remarkably clear head despite the excess of the day before. I took the short walk out of my room to the shared facilities and as I remember it now I think my room might have been to the left or right as you came in from the street so that you had to walk along a path across the small inner garden to the bathroom which was at the back somewhere. the bathroom can't have been too bad because I don't remember very much about it (which turns out to be surprising). I think I had a shave and a shower and went back to the room to listen to the radio and pack the day bag for whatever may have been in store.

I was two steps put of the room off to breakfast on something like tea and toast at the RS Restaurant when whatever-his-name-was came alongside with renewed efforts to offload the balance of what we had been smoking the day previously. I began to "get it". I was obliged in a manner of speaking. Something like this, only much less subtle, happened to me in Tangiers many years later.

In that case my companion and I were walking along the road at the bottom of the town that looks out to the docks. A guy showed me a huge lump of something unmistakable and enquired whether I was interested. I said I really wasn't but the guy invited us to join him for a sit down and a cup of tea, the mint variety. Why not? It was a balmy night, we'd just arrived there at the beginning of a short adventure and this was part of it.

We had reached the place where there are steps up into the Medina and the guy motioned us to wait while he fetched some chairs from a café about 30 yards away. He set the chairs down and the three of us looked out over the docks all lit up. He rolled a big spliff, lit it and handed it to me. We were a discreet distance from the café but still very much in public. He gave us some spiel about the boats that carry hashish over to Europe every night to Europe. Part of his U.S.P. - Unique Selling Proposition - was that the stuff that was exported was nowhere near as good as what the locals kept back for themselves. The stuff for export was adulterated and its odour had to be disguised which meant there were impurities in it that made it less than safe to smoke to his mind. His stuff, by contrast, was the very best. No additives or preservatives. 100% unadulterated genuine Bedouin (more likely Berber) Moroccan golden hashish.

It certainly smelled very strong and tasted very strong. In fact it was very strong. All of a sudden both of us were really pretty stoned.

The guy then asked if we wanted some. We said we really honestly didn't (we did at some point, by the way, but it hadn't been our intention to buy stuff off the street like this). The guy then became a bit more insistent stating that we had already smoked the stuff and that having tried it it and declared it good we really had to buy it. There was no ignoring the guy. We thanked him again for the offer but we really thought we had to pass this time. Anyway we didn't actually need any because we were "sorted", so to speak. The man then uttered some words that still cause a chill to course down my spine when I think about them. He said: "You want I make a problem for you? I know where you are staying".

Then the distance between our chairs and the café seemed less of a comfort and more of an enormous gulf between us and relative safety. Senses more than slightly heightened by the very strong spliff, we began to become aware of our isolation. At the same time other things become clearer such as the fact that there were vehicles passing all the time and occasionally these contained uniformed occupants. The Police?

It didn't take long to decide that the man's very generous offer should be accepted. The sample smoke had indeed hit the spot and, even though £15 each was more than we had really intended to spend, what we were getting seemed just about value for money compared with the UK price for the absolute rubbish that is exported there. We parted on the best of terms, our apologies for any misunderstanding having been magnanimously accepted.

My companion (who may not wish to be named so I won't identify him at this stage) did comment that he couldn't believe I had got round my trip a few years earlier in one piece. I never told him that I had. It's a bit like the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas opening lines. Metaphorically speaking I didn't tell him about the bats.

So how does this relate to my present predicament in Pushkar? Well, on the one hand I had already shown myself as susceptible to the pleasures of the resinous pollen of the Indian hemp plant; on the other, the day before I had disclosed that I was not in the market because I had plenty, in fact way too much, to be going along with. If (like some of the Hindu deities) I had more than the usual two arms I could say that on the third hand I had already smoked some of what I was now being asked to buy.

I was obliged, you see. This cylindrical lump of resin (with some already consumed) was also part of the cost of the previous morning's entertainment. I complained that I had come to Pushkar to relax and not to spend very much money. The truth was that after stumping up for the puja the day before I didn't have very much ready cash anyway so I couldn't afford what he wanted from me. I had to disappoint my young host. I went to breakfast and spent some time reading on the rooftop terrace.

Then I went shopping. Looking is free.

The Aftermath

Pushkar had peaked too early for me. After the first hour in the place nothing very much that might happen to me would seem particularly remarkable.

I think I just crashed into my room and took a little while to piece together the events since I had woken up in a marooned railway carriage at 6.30 that morning.

My notes say that I wrote. Out there somewhere is a letter written just hours after what I have just described. I wonder who's got it?

I ate in only one restaurant while I was in Pushkar. The R S Resturant. I think I had a late-ish breakfast/early lunch on the rooftop when I emerged from my room. The young ex Brahmin was quickly in attendance as I emerged and was anxious to know whether I would be interested in a "tola" of the finest quality Parvati chars (from Himanchal Pradesh and officially not drugs). I disclosed I was actually fairly well provided for in that department. I shouldn't have made this disclosure. Anyway I went off for my breakfast, wrote postcards and a letter and probably read a few pages of one the books I had picked up in Delhi.

There is nothing in the filo-fax to record my having done or seen anything else, just a big gap between two entries that say "RS Rest."

So I must have had dinner and gone to bed. Even though I had achieved very little since an hour after my arrival the events of the early morning had been more than enough, even too much to take in.