Your Fake Country

“Biju looked at him and had to avert his gaze as if from an obscenity. In its own way it was like a prostitute – it showed too much. The book in his hand had a cover of Krishna on the battlefield in lurid colours, the same ones used in movie posters. What was India to these people? How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people’s countries. Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his own did to him?”

- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

I read this passage while perched on the stairs of the Ganesh guest house, listening to the incessant rhythmless drumming of the three French backpackers who’d sprawled across the roof. They’d rolled joints and over the next forty minutes their drumming echoes over the town, as it gets louder and less in time, and drowns out sounds of worship from the temple next door.

That morning, a sixty-plus American draped in loose, coarse fabric had stormed out of the hostel, calling the owner a “blasted fishwife” after being told they had no fresh milk. The guy who clears the tables rolls his eyes and tells another story from his twenty years spent in hostels across India.

He explains that inflation is changing travel for both domestic and international tourists, but that raising prices at any hostel results in torrents of abuse from the granola crowd. “They come at the same time every year. Work five months over there then fly via Dubai. Five, six month a time. That fellow,” and he nods to one of the tangled-headed men on the roof, “Every year. This year four month only. Bad year in France.”

Over the past three years he says the price of a room has increased by 100 rupees. That’s about $2.30 Australian. And they argue, and argue.

Like Biju, I don’t understand what version of this country people are buying into. Where this idea of India came from. They act with complete disrespect toward locals, flaunt local customs and display a general lack of humanity which is shrugged off with a simple, “nah man, these are my people. I feel them” and a gesture toward the tilaka smeared across their forehead by a passing Sadhu looking for change.

I think a lot of travellers would do well to stop consulting these meticulously constructed mental maps as to what country stands for, and actually open their eyes to the people they’re interacting with every day.

I read Inheritance until the buzzing of mosquitoes sent me scurrying under the net and into bed. The next day, I was awoken at dawn by monkeys throwing themselves from the trees onto the electric wires that ran over the balcony outside my room. I stumbled out of bed and climbed to the roof and recorded this. I think it’s beautiful:

Posted in Travel on Monday May 25, 2009.