Hill Station Blues

Darjeeling, the queen of the hill stations, is a bit slow apparently if I have to surf the Net daily for entertainment. I am sitting in a cafe called Fiesta something in their Internet area. The cafe is located in the Mall (rhymes with Cal, the nickname for UCBerkeley that I resent--it is not the only UC anymore!), the town square. There is a stage in the middle of the Mall, and tonight it has a mural of the Nativity painted in it, and the Darjeeling Christian Council is presenting their annual holiday pageant. I hear children singing ardently about Jesus; earlier they were praising his birth while dancing disco moves. I thought I could travel to India to escape silly Christmas celebrations, but apparently I was wrong.

We checked out of the Gymkhana this morning and moved into the New Elgin, almost right next door. The Gymkhana staff warned us there was no central heating, but we did not comprehend the implications of that statement until 1 am, when even three wool blankets were not enough to keep out the cold. Even the common dining area was not heated, and it got old fast to wear our overcoats and hats while eating breakfast parathas.

The New Elgin is a Raj-era heritage property. I rolled my eyes at the 60s-period portrait of Queen Elizabeth hanging in the hall. The best news about the New Elgin is that we have an electric heater in our room. The lounge also has a full bar, so we might enjoy a nightcap before our 4 am wakeup call for Tiger Hill.

I forgot to mention that our crazy jeep driver up to Darjeeling yesterday worried me because his rearview mirror was almost completely obscured by a photo of Aishwarya Rai's eyes that he had glued onto the glass. At first I was concerned that he would not be able to see approaching traffic whilst being hypnotized by Miss World's mesmerizing blue-green eyes (how is that possible for a South Indian?), but then I realized it was a moot point because he never used his rearview mirror! Also his sideview mirrors were both folded in so that he could pass cars on the narrow road. Hopefully tomorrow's jeep driver down to Siliguri will be OK. I have heard that drivers turn the engine off to save gas and coast down the hairpins. That should be exciting.

Dev mentioned that at the Internet cafe we visited yesterday, he saw some Nepali kids looking at porn. I imagine that Internet cafe managers are much like librarians in not monitoring their patrons' surfing habits. For instance, I notice here that there is both a statue of Ganesh, remover of obstacles, and a painting of Saraswati, goddess of learning, displayed behind the routers, but no god(dess) of filtering.

My father has pointed out how the Nepali people have been continuously exploited, first by the British and now by the Indians. In Darjeeling you can see them breaking their backs hauling bags of rice and carts of milk up the steep streets of the town. In the Gymkhana all the service staff are Nepali, and they did not look dressed for the cold in their light sweaters and sandals.

I was so excited to find ONE trashcan in this town, in the Mall, with a large sign proclaiming, "Your filth contaminates our health." I knew that the plastic bag of orange peels I threw inside would immediately be poured out into the street (to be combed through first by people and then by dogs for anything scavengable), but I liked that someone cared enough to pay lip service to the environment. My father's theory is that the lowest caste (untouchables) was traditionally forced to handle garbage, so everyone still thinks of litter as "not my problem." People just throw plastic and food trash into the street without looking. This really disturbs me.

On a lighter note, we met an awesome puppy today. We were walking down a steep hill to the train station, and we saw a cute white dog in front of his house. My dad stopped to make friends with the dog, and his owners, an older Nepali couple, came out to talk. They told my dad that the dog knew how to do "namaste," and he did! He stood on his hind legs and kind of touched his front paws together. His owners said he does it even better if you offer him meat. I also took photos of some kittens down the street from Mr. Namaste Paws.