Rishikesh

With all its dreadlocked hippies and dropouts, it’s amazing wholesome Indian families bundle into Rishikesh at all. Split along the banks of the holy Ganges River, the town nestled at the foot of the Himalayas has been the home of spiritual slushies since the Beatles arrived in the 60s. Though since engorged from its ghats and temples with shops hawking the uniforms of international backpacking – tie-dyed totes, tank-tops with acid flashbacks of Hindu Gods, and polyester shawls with “100% Kashmiri” tags – Rishikesh, almost in spite of the rest of the country, manages to retain a semblance of untarnished, old time India. Cows roam the cobbled streets and sadhus or Hindu saints, perpetually competing with the hippies for world’s filthiest and best dreadlocked, beg alms. Which explains in part, why families still flock to Rishikesh: the town speaks to the India of their past, of a holy Hindustan without the turbulence of meat or malls, fast food chains or foreign films. It’s a slice of northern India with a steely blue river winding its way through the land of their epics, their history, themselves.
Needless to say, the Indian families, headed by middle aged doctors and engineers, earning middle class salaries, all with stomachs that look like they swallowed pressure cookers full of lentils, do not stay in the ashrams or backpacker ghettos. Rishikesh, in ways, looks like no one has heard of such luxuries as hygiene and housing or that an alternate universe exists where cafes cook pizza napoletani, Israeli falafel, and Indian curries as if they were members of the same culinary tradition. Parts are simply too funky for a family vacation.
And for me.

Like Indian tourists, I avoid the laughing yoga classes, flee “expanded consciousness” conversations, and head for something that I’d heard cliques of backpackers, one more than one occasion, scorn: rafting down the Ganges.
In an office hidden behind an internet café, I book a ticket.
“Tomorrow is Holi,” says the tea boy sweeping the floor, “it will be difficult to get tickets.” Holi is a Hindu holiday where, in the name of brotherhood, Indians get liquored up and dash florescent colored dust on each other. For days leading up to it, I dodged water balloons lobed from balconies as if they were grenades. It’s one of Hinduisms more hedonistic holidays. The intent is to show equality among men, to blur distinctions, if only for an afternoon. That smeared in gold, eggplant purple and pink lemonade, everyone, Brahmins and Dalits, rich and poor, look the same. In most cases, though, randy teens use Holi as an excuse to blow off steam and fondle one another. “Rishikesh will be crazy,” he says.
But I persist and when the boss floats through the glass doors, a bearded man with flowing black hair and a saffron robe, he scolds the tea boy’s apprehension. It’s unclear if he’s upset at the boy’s poor salesmanship or just acting the boss, but within moments my ticket is booked.

Early the next morning, I stroll towards the northern end of Rishikesh, the backpacker ghetto. But within ten feet of my hostel, I receive my first “happy Holi!” An emaciated sadhu, his face as wrinkled as a raisin, his legs, no thicker than the bamboo cane supporting him, hobbles towards me and with his free hand, smears purple dust across my cheek. This, I would learn, was a tame reception. Upriver, in front of a temple, a rave of hippies, backpackers, and local teens prance and dance and splash each other with colors. Fording through, I’m soaked when a bucket of pink water douses me.

After a falafel and a scrubbing in the Ganges, I slosh over to meet the other rafters. A truck with a raft strapped to its roof waits on the shoulder, its bed crammed with seven or eight kids and its cab with a few adults. Checking in, I ask how far a drive it will be.
“Fifteen minutes, only” assures the driver.
I slide into the back seat next to Sanjay. He’s middle aged and balloon-faced, with a fondue of black hair and puffy eyes burrowed behind sunglasses. He wears a polo shirt tucked smugly into his khaki shorts.
“Only fifteen minutes,” Sanjay reassures me. Though India is the world’s seventh largest country, any distance, whether an overnight train journey or a hop to the pharmacy, is greeted with, “fifteen minutes.” Seated, the driver slams into first and speeds across the precipitous slopes of the Himalayan foothills. Like all Indian motorists, he drives without the slightest regards to etiquette or safety: weaving between cars and cows, gassing it around tight corners, rolling his eyes and accelerating when asked to relax.

“He can do everything, but slow down,” laughs Sanjay. After our initial name exchange, I could have all but guessed his next questions: Country? Job? Qualifications? Salary? Father’s salary? We discover that we both live in Delhi, he in the burbs, me in the city. Sanjay says he’s a doctor, on vacation with his wife, who is also a doctor, and his sister and her husband, his brother-in-law’s sister and her husband, all their kids, and a pair of wobbly grandparents. “Everyone together!” he boasts.

Peeking back to the trunk, I half expect to see his entire extended family hanging on for dear life: saris unreeled like safety lines, kids dangling from their ends. But it’s just the kids – pudgy, pimpled, pasty. Sanjay doesn’t pay them the slightest bit of attention. Instead, he rattles on about America, being a doctor, and about Mother India’s glorious rise. Meanwhile, the kids bounce up and down like they’re on a trampoline, grinning as if it’s their first time beyond their father’s reach.

An hour later we reach a beach. Rafts are set along the river’s banks. Helmets and life jackets are distributed. Following Sanjay’s lead, his clan clicks on their gear. They look both proud and terrified, like freshly enlisted soldiers off to their first tour of combat duty.
Another hour passes waiting for our guide. I pace.

“Just a case of IST,” Sanjay says loud enough for his children and nephews to hear. I take my queue and ask what it means.
“Indian Standard Time,” he roars. “Hope you brought a tent and a sleeping bag, we could be here all night!” Sanjay introduces me to his family. Each looks less suited for rafting than the next. The mothers are wadded into full saris, aside from Sanjay, the men wear pants, the children, stuffed into sweatpants and sandals. The grandparents wait like they are seeing their family off for good. The patriarch pressed into a pistachio Nehru suit, his wife wrapped in a lemon marmalade sari. They pose for a photo. And even though jammed into the truck they were all teeth and tongues, posing before the Ganges, strapped into their rafting gear, no one smiles.
Finally the guide arrives. Gaunt, goateed, and chewing a hunk of paan, he jolts to the beach, and hops atop our raft to give a stump speech.

“Quiet!” he barks. By nature, Indians are chatters, but when he asks for their attention, everyone falls silent. “If I say forward, go forward. Fast, go fast. Stop, you better god damn stop.” He peers into the ogle of helmets and life jackets. “Who swims?” I’m the only raised hand. “How many of you have been rafting before?” I peek around, again I’m the only raised hand. “Who will be leader?” Finally, my moment of glory. A childhood of being last picked in everything and now, in India, I’m practically an Olympian. But before I can raise my hand, Sanjay’s warbled arm rockets up. I may have the skills, but he’s got the years. And even with globalization’s grip on India – kids out-earning and out-learning their elders – seniority still means something.

We pile into the raft, Sanjay and myself in the front, the others clinging to the sides, the guide mounted in the rear. Most the kids have disappeared. The grandparents and the uncle who photographed us stay behind.

We push off into the Ganges, Hinduism’s holiest river. “Forward!” thunders the guide.
For a moment, I actually think it will be an eventless afternoon. The trees, sunshine, some fresh air. But within moments it’s obvious that Sanjay and his family have never been in a raft, river or likely a swimming pool. Sanjay barely wets his paddle when he orders with much aplomb, “Sammyji, Forward!” We plod more than glide through the river. Our strokes lack any rhythm or results.

“STOP!” hollers the guide.
“STOP!” echoes Sanjay and then turns to me, “Sammyji, STOP!”

“Double Trouble, the big rapid, is up ahead,” warns the guide. “Get serious.”

Sanjay yanks off his sunglasses and raises his eyebrows into a pair of peeks. “Double Trouble!” he howls.

The banks narrow and the water quickens, sucking us forward like we’re twisting down a drain. Ahead, boulders jut from the surface and water churns. The guide tells one of the aunts to crouch against the front of the raft, between Sanjay and me, to prevent us from capsizing. Like a mosquito hovering around your ear, everyone emits a low groan that grows louder as the rapids’ uppercutting and jabbing intensify.

“FAST!! FAST!!” bellows the guide. We all paddle as quickly as we can: the kids whipping at thin air, the mothers, eyes sealed shut, frozen by fear. In the chaos, I manage a few solid strokes, but to my disbelief, as the rapids smash into our faces, Sanjay, fearing either a Mutiny on the Bounty or just slightly crazy, shouts, “Paddle faster Sammyji. FASTER!” The rapids subside. It’s quiet but for the hum of heavy breathing and the fading rapids behind us. Then Sanjay yanks of his sunglasses and gives me a hard stare. I’m about to burst. Who in the hell is he to be upset with me? He can’t even paddle, I think. But his crowbar expression twists into a gaping, toothy grin.
“Hindustan!” shouts Sanjay, pumping his paddle into the air.
“Jai!” cheers his family.
“Hindustan!!”
“Jai!” they repeat. Maybe it’s because India is a relatively young nation or because the future seems to brighten for the urban middle class with each passing minute, but Indians cheerlead their country like they’re at a high school football game. Yet right as it begins, it ends. And our raft is again quietly meandering like a lazy cow down the Ganges.

We stop and drag the raft onto a rocky beach snuggled below a canyon. Rudraksha trees sparsely crown the hills like a comb-over. The guide, taking the sun’s queue, disappears. Bags of chips are popped open and soda bottles fizz over. In addition to typical Indian hospitality, surviving a few rapids practically adopts me into Sanjay’s clan. Food finds its way, unannounced, into my pruned hands, and bottles of orange soda are forced on me. Their earlier formality slackens. Daughters I didn’t notice before, maybe ten or eleven-years-old, blush when I speak a few words of Hindi. Sanjay’s nephew, the eldest of the children at 14, starts singing.

“He’s very talented,” shines his mother as one of the daughters absently passes me the chips. He looks like an adolescent Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood’s Brad Pitt. Belting out “Ajab Si” from the box office titan, Jab We Met, he twists around, shimming his shoulders suggestively, flicking his wrists into the air, figure eighting his hips. Siblings start clapping and, I’m not joking, just like in a Bollywood movie, a handful of people who were no where to be seen moments earlier, appear from thin air dressed in matching wardrobes, dancing to choreographed steps. All the kids from the drive earlier, the starchy grandparents and a missing uncle or two, circle around the heartthrob, bouncing to his rhythm, cooing to his shakes. The photographer uncle snaps a paparazzi shot. It’s amazing the adulation they heap upon him.
An hour ticks off the clock.

“Where is that damn guide?” Sanjay snips. The song have since fizzled out. The kids have plopped into the wet sand. The moms lean tiredly against rocks. Sanjay looks irritable, like he’s been marooned. “It’s almost been an hour.”

Indian Standard Time, I suggest. A moment later, the guide marches out from the forest.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sanjay snaps. But the guide just brushes past him.

“FORWARD,” he shouts as everyone crams themselves into the raft.

According to my latest count, 16 are in a raft that earlier held nine. There are only six paddles, one broken. The family begins playing musical chairs, taking turns in the middle, in the front, testing the paddles. The mothers are reluctant to allow their kids near the more dangerous, front half. We cross under a bridge and everyone erupts. “Smile, smile,” says one of the mothers. “Uncleji is up above.” Sure enough, nearly a half mile ahead of us, he’s there with the boxy camera around his neck, preparing to click another family memento.

The sun begins to set, but the sky, unlike the day’s Holi festivities, is gray, like someone sketched it in pencil. What’s left of the holiday is stained into my clothes, dyed into the crevices of my ears, blotting my scalp. Sanjay has eased up his earlier bantering, muttering to himself and pointing out birds to his sons. So out of curiosity, I ask his caste. Though it continues to dictate much of life – from marriages to careers, births to deaths – broaching the topic feels awkward, like asking a Westerner their salary (In India, total strangers will inquire about one’s earnings). People often brush it off or under the rug with an, “I’m an X,Y, or Z, but I don’t really follow that.” Sanjay’s response is striking in its casualness.

“Brahmin,” he replies.

In your opinion, I ask, is caste positive or negative?

“Essentially, it’s a good thing,” nods Sanjay and then changes the subject. “You must have enjoyed Holi,” he says, smiling at my once white t-shirt. “It’s one of my favorites because it makes us all brothers, equals.” Even if I’ve been living in India for nearly a year, the place of a foreigner is to learn not judge. Thus, I don’t point out this seeming contradiction. But neither does anyone else. Maybe his wife and sisters and brother-in-laws were not listening or maybe they were, but agreed with him or possibly even they disagreed, but feared opposing the family’s future patriarch. Whatever their personal views, today’s India is, if anything, a hotly wound knot of contradictions. That the popularity of ancient towns like Rishikesh grows as freshly minted mega cities erupt like geysers. That despite increased access to education and knowledge, men still dominate life, from politics and work, to gossip and rafting trips. That on a day signifying equality, citizens of a secular democracy applaud caste. Certainly, on another raft, with another family, the answers would have been different. In such a sundry country, a diversity of views is inevitable. And maybe that’s the ultimate beauty of India: that so many paradoxes and confusions flourish together.

Eventually we glide under a second bridge and pose for another group photo for the uncle. The Ganges mellows considerably and soon we are floating along the ghats of Rishikesh. Men bathe side-by-side with cows in its cool waters. Hippies sit strumming guitars along the banks, Westerners practice Yoga to the sunset.

“STOP!” says the guide one last time, as we saddle up alongside the ghat’s ancient stone steps. I’m waiting for Sanjay to parrot him, to especially inform me that I too should stop. But, perhaps for the first time all afternoon, he’s silent, watching the Ganges flow towards eternity.