A Day at the Gauntlet

In India, you will often find yourself both incredibly exhilarated and excruciatingly uncomfortable. Somewhat akin to watching Borat. With someone you just met. This was the case when Illivaranso escorted Baptiste and myself to a remote and tiny village to watch the 1,000 year old tradition of the "bull race." The excursion was a welcome break for the two of us, as it fell on a Wednesday afternoon when we would otherwise have been dejectedly staring at a computer screen trying to make yet another Excel macro application behave. The village was a forty minute drive from Tirichuli, and added all new meaning to rural as well as to my understanding of what comprises a road. Aside from the short description "bull race" I had no idea what the event was about, so when we turned a final corner in the jeep and I saw - on what would otherwise have been barren fallow land - a crowd of 5,000, I knew that something particularly exciting had to be happening to convince people to give up their sacred three hour afternoon nap.

I noticed a good 100 bulls lined up by a cement building, each thoughtfully painted with fluorescent colors, sprinkled with sequins and sparkles, donning flowers and woven grasses. People gathered on either side of a narrow 1,000 foot strip of sand that was to be the "gauntlet" and stood on makeshift wooden slats that resembled something like bleachers. Soon, it was question as to whether the attraction was the "races" or me and Baptiste. The villagers, wanting to graciously welcome us, insisted that instead of pressing ourselves into the overflowing bleachers, that we climb up to the stage overlooking the gauntlet where all the action began. I looked up to the stage, a good 12 feet above me and shuddered. The contraption looked about as stable as the tree house I tried to force my brother to make with me when I was nine and he was four. The one we abandoned after a fruitless hour of trying to tie dry twigs together with twine. The one that fell down over the course of that very evening. However, not only would I have been very rude to refuse the prime "VIP" spot that awaited me at the top, but there was no choice but to clamber up the thing as 100 hands started grabbing at me. I cursed the moment that morning when, standing in contemplation before the one shelf in my room that houses my meager supply of clothes, I had opted for a skirt instead of pants. A skirt that has a tendency to billow, and the wind was already proving itself mischievous. Bravely, I put one hand on a wooden bar above me, and the other looked to somehow pull at my skirt in just a way to make me decent as I ascended. The next three minutes were a comic display of my fear of heights, my acrobatic skills now severely impaired by the ensuing lack of mobility thanks to my vigilant efforts to not flash a crowd of thousands, and my attempt to reduce the number of splinters in my one climbing hand from fifty to ten.

As I reached the VIP pinnacle, a deafening roar boomed from the crowd, nearly enough vibration emanating from below that I thought the stage just might disintegrate. I looked around, expecting to lay eyes on an exceptionally large bull, for example, that would have elicited such enthusiasm from the masses. There was no bull and as I gazed ahead, I saw all eyes on me. Upon closer inspection, I also noticed that there was not a single woman within in a mile. Suddenly, I knew just how those few courageous men who decided to take a class at Smith must have felt when they first encountered a room of love-sick and sleep-deprived Smithies - completely and utterly terrified. I gave a little round of waves, blushing. I then pretended to be very interested in my splinters.

I sat on a pile of towels, handed out later as prizes, on a narrow plank, and looking through the thin slats that comprised the stage, I could see a bull holding pen bellow me. It could only hold one animal at a time. I began to understand that this was not a race between bulls, but something much more dangerous; the gauntlet's path, once devoid of people, now had one hundred plus men racing down it to press right up to the holding pen's gate. I wasn't sure whether they were brave or each missing the brain lobe that registers both fear and reason, or whether, possibly, they had been promised a shorter prison sentence if they dared to stand directly in the path of a very annoyed bull. There were men of all ages shoving up against each other, including some pre-pubescent boys who seemed barely able to manage the throng of their own kind, nevertheless the well-aimed kick of a peeved and bewildered bull. The announcer stood right above me, and I was glad that, unlike me, he had elegantly mastered the art of decency with his own skirt. His voice became increasingly excited, and I knew the games were about to begin.

Down in the holding pen, I saw a small bull, maybe a year or two old. When I looked behind the holding pen, I saw a line of bulls extending towards the horizon, they were arranged by size, and by the end of the queue there were beasts that were so bulky they had surely been fed a steady diet of peanut-butter laden chapatis. The men in the gauntlet began getting agitated, waiting for the first bull. The young animal below was getting an awful beating - the rope in its nose, usually used to gently guide the beast home at dusk, was being pulled vigorously, brutally chaffing the inside of its nostrils. Its owner punched its head and its bum was whipped with a branch. Men outside picked up handfuls of sand, and when finally the bull was released, surging forward it was greeted by sand in the eyes and a crowd of men smacking its rear. The "braver" men attempted to ride the animal as it tumbled down the gauntlet to safety, shaking its great head and horns.

As each consecutive bull passed, the crowd's fever increased. The trick, I realized, was to latch on to a bull and hold on for dear life until about 300 feet down the gauntlet you passed a dirty piece of polyester string raised to the top of the bleachers. Depending on the size of the bull and its capacity for rage, and if you made it to the string, you would win a towel or a tin bucket and somewhere between a whopping $3 and $5 - maybe enough to cover your medical costs or a grave plot. Last year, two men were killed.

It was getting hard to tell if the crowd came for the bulls or for the WWF mini-matches that took place on the gauntlet's grounds. While at the beginning of the races, men were playfully smacking each other as if to say "hey loser, you stepped on my bare foot," the mounting tension, the increased size of the bulls, the need to be forever glorified as that guy who held onto a bull's rump for five seconds, took over. Once friendly shoves turned into punches, turned into a face off of the divided village hood. The six policeman on the stage looked on, immobile. One was sending text messages, another was intimately acquainting his finger with his left nostril. The announcer shouted himself hoarse.

After many minutes, many bulls and many pictures, I decided I would also have one too many appointments with the village chiropractor if I didn't evacuate the one millionth of an acre I'd carved out for myself. It took a good five minutes to convince those around me that it seemed a good time to leave. Getting off the platform proved easier to do than getting up it, in part because I decided to live on the edge and plummet the last seven feet to the ground. A round of applause politely followed. I smoothed out my hair, and found Baptsite and Illivaranso gorging on sweets and soda. We prepared to leave.

"This is no game" Illivaranso offered as we inched our way down the village road, only stopping once for the unlikely pair of a cow and a dog. The cow stared at us, solemnly chewing her cud and the dog, much more insolent was far more interested in attending to his nether regions than taking his business somewhere less public. Many rounds of the beeping horn persuaded them to edge off to the shoulder of the road. "This is lifes and dead," he added. And I nodded in total agreement, remembering the aggressive and angered faces of the men in the gauntlet, wondering if the next day they would turn to great each other nicely as they regained the normalcy of their lives, pushing aside violence for the next year.

Chips 'n Soda

The other day, I have to go to the Post Office to mail a letter. But because every building here looks as though it could potentially be a house, I'm really not even sure if one exists in town. Luckily Illivaranso was ready to help out, and Baptiste, quite sick of sitting in the stuffy office, decided that he too wanted a ride in the jeep. We find the post office, I mail a letter and although we take off in the direction of the ODAM office, I find that we've taken not a short cut, but a long detour.
"Factory, Factory," says Illivaranso, as he stops the jeep on a dusty little road lined with small houses, a tiny store, a batch of kids and the requisite piles of trash. I look out the tinted window towards where he's pointing. I see another squat house. Baptiste steps out into the heat. I follow. Illivaranso starts talking to a woman who has a shrill but happy voice, and before I can ask about the "factory," Baptiste and I are being shuttled into her house/room. It is dark, though not cool, and Baptiste and I sit on her cot. A puppy tries to bite Illivaranso, who, without second thought, kicks it. The woman laughs and leaves. The puppy follows only to return a little more peeved a few minutes later.
"Qu-est-ce qu'on fait la?" asks Baptiste.
"I don't know what we're doing here." I respond, attending to a bug bite on my ankle and staring at her carefully folded saris.
She returns with two Indian sodas, which Baptiste and I had been quite keen on trying the day previous. Although we are touched by this very generous act, knowing how much soda costs in India, our enthusiasm for the syrupy soda quickly wanes. Baptiste tries not to laugh after taking a first sip. Warily, I try it and marvel at how it has managed to maintain any sort of market presence. A mix between a generic brand of cough syrup and smelted Laffy Taffy, the soda surely begins turning my blood so sickeningly sweet that every mosquito from here to Bombay is presently yahoo-mapping the address of my cement room. I look at my already chewed up ankles and wince.
The woman is part of a microfinance group administered by Odam, and between obligatory sips of crazy-soda I ask her questions about her experience. She has bought a rice grinder with her money, and sells her product to local families who make a sour dosa (crepe) from it. She shows us pictures of all the women in her self-help group, and tells us too about her children. Illivaranso finally gestures for us to leave, still muttering something about a factory. Baptiste and I sport grins while downing the rest of our drinks, making nice sounding exclamatory remarks in French "Comment ils boivent ca??" Although we are loath to admit it, this may be the most exciting thing that's happened to us all week.
Once outside, we head across the road, to the squat house. I am hardly prepared for what I find inside. There are fifteen woman, surrounded by clouds of flour, sitting on the floor, each holding a tiny, 4 inch long metal baton which they are using to smooth out small circles of dough. A man is punching away at a wad of yellow dough, flies in his wake. Another man, shirtless and sweating, greats us. He is the owner of this "chip" operation, and he brings us through a hallway to another room. I step over a naked child fitfully snoozing away in a pile of flour.
"Our women can make up to 80 rupees a day ($2)", he explains, pointing to another woman who is loading the little pancake like forms into a splintered wooden crate. "Each can make up to 75 kilograms in a week." I nod, unsure if this is impressive. I certainly couldn't eat even 1 kilogram in a week, and especially don't want to now that I've spotted another hoard of flies heading for an especially slick looking pile of chips. "We ship this to Madurai, and big companies buy them for manufacture. Follow me." We return to the other room, the women stare and smile. I'm probably doing the same. The man pushes some pungent spices into my face so I can smell the special ingredients that go into his chips, he even goads me into tasting a bit of baking powder which he had ever so wily convinced me was salt. It doesn't settle so well with the taste of soda that will linger for the next ten hours on my tongue. "Thank you." I offer. And we leave.
At lunch, I am presented with one of the chips. I eat it.

Soft Rain Voyage

One day, Baptiste and I go for a tea break at our favorite chai stand. It has a block of cement you can sit on and a palm leaf roof for shelter from the sun. Plus the man who makes the coffee serves it out of a large, shiny copper vat, which is somehow much more visually appealing than the standard tin ones we see in town. Upon our arrival, we find two staff members who have escaped as well for a break, and as they pass us the world's hardest "sweet" - a combination of peanuts and sugar packed into a tight cube - I decide to wow them with my newly acquired Tamil skills. "I am a woman." I state. Encouraged by the display of grins amongst the tea drinkers, I say, pointing to someone, "He is a man." I continue on "I love Rainbow the dog. Rainbow is a dog." Baptiste, who had been mastering the fine technique of keeping all his teeth and eating the nut dessert, only just tunes in. He wants to talk too. "I am a dog (nay)." he proudly says. Everyone roars with laughter. "Aan" (man), I offer gently, "You are a man." He nods, looking a bit confused, turning the peanut mass in his fingers. I don't insist.

Upon returning to the office, the Director's son, Illivaranso, 33 years old, approaches me. He worked in the entertainment industry in Chennai (Madras) for ten years, then moved back to Tirichuli, married his cousin, and is now enjoying the "jolly" family life he's established. He never puts his cell phone down and is the proud driver of the Ambassador car.
"We go see soft rain." he says, gesturing like he's driving.
"Ok." I say, smiling, waiting for more info, because I've heard there is a trip in the works, but I'm not sure if "soft rain" qualifies as a destination.
"Fall" he says.
Talking with only the use of verbs has become standard for me, so "fall" potentially has many meanings. It is maybe the rain that falls, or someone he knew fell once, or because of the exhaustion of another day at the office, he is concerned that I will fall. I keep nodding, waiting, biding my time.
"We go to falls. Mountains." Now I understand.
"When" I ask?
"Saturday." This is good.

Of course, a Saturday departure quickly becomes an impromptu Friday afternoon departure, and, because I want to have some control over my destiny, I ask in the one hectic hour I have to pack, where, exactly, I am going. From each of the five staff members I ask, I hear something different; I am able, not to distinguish a word, but a single consonant - "K". I look up every possible destination in Tamil Nadu in my guidebook as I throw an assortment of belongings into a small backpack. Nothing seems to match both waterfalls and the letter 'K', so I give up, per usual, the sense that I have any idea what is going on.

Baptiste, Illivaranso and Chandru and I head out in the jeep, bouncing past hogs, cows, and five people crammed onto a motorcycle. After two hours of driving, there is a sudden flurry of cell phone calls, and Chandru and Illivaranso are gleefully shouting back and forth. Where we were once beeping our way down the "highway" at an unsettingly rapid pace, we have now bumped our way onto the shoulder and pulled to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Across the road, another jeep has done just the same, and a stream of men pile out of it, rushing towards us. Apparently, they are friends from Tirichuli who I haven't met yet, so I get out of the jeep, immediately stepping onto a large juliflora thorn that slips its way through my flip-flop and into my heel. I yank it out, check out the local flora and pick a particularly beautiful purple flower. I show it to the group of men and they start waving their arms frantically, pointing to a white substance pouring out of the stem. "Poison!". I drop the flower, quickly wash my hands, and wish I had just stayed in the van like Baptiste. Soon we are back on our way, approaching mountains awash in clouds, and Baptiste and I are wondering out loud, in French, just how cool the air will be.

I consider that this is primarily a scenic, peaceful excursion of sorts, maybe involving a quaint hike, some photos, a picnic of curries and rice balls; I am surprised to find, as we pull into the main town of the "Five Falls" attraction, that this is hardly what is in store. This is India, after all. The "parking lots", really, are just place holders, with no rhyme or reason to them. Everyone does just as they please, regardless of how everyone else is going about the tricky business of cramming their vehicles into a swell of ditches, mud, and ill placed trees. Buses, which play songs when they go in reverse, are screeching into the lots, narrowly escaping tragic fates then reversing out to try again. None of the "reversing" songs match and one has the acute sense of being at an amusement park gone terribly awry. Buses get stuck in any number of ditches that have developed over time and some drivers don't even bother to dig themselves out, shutting off the engines and heading straight for the falls. People peer out of the windows, dropping mango rinds and newspaper bits to the ground and when, or rather, just before, their bus comes to rest, they rush to the bus doors and tumble out by the hundreds, tossing babies, packages of hot sauce and bottles of shampoo between them; ice-cream vendors weave through oxen and dogs. I cautiously get out of the van, hear the roar of one of the falls, and have an immediate craving for chai.

After simply looking at this particular waterfall, and seeing the hundreds of tourists lining up to stand underneath them, we retire to our hotel, and change for the "bathing." It is now late at night, the blue moon hanging above the clouds, and the boys are ready to move. When we get to the next waterfall, things have quieted down a bit. "Soft Rain," offers Illivaranso again, pointing to the sky where, indeed, a light rain is sprinkling on us. Before I can even answer though, I am being pushed past a large tree by a group of women. "Follow them!" says Chandru, pointing down a rocky slope to the "women's" section of the waterfall, and I obey, scuttling down the rock face towards a crowd of women standing, fully clothed, directly underneath the water. They push me right into their midst, and I can't see a thing from the heavy fall of the water. One of my bangles snaps in half, I can barely hear anything either except for the occasional "From what country come you?" that this woman or that, shoved into the tight space between rocks where we are all huddling, inquires over the deafening roar of the falls. I push my way out, gasping for air, only to be lathered up with soap and tossed back into the fray. Some of us are laughing, some women are frowning intensely, their eyes clasped shut, meditative. In the chaotic rush to the falls, I haven't been able to remove my towel from my waist and so it gets just as soaked as me. But this is India, and everything dries up right away, back to the way it was minutes before, just the pressure of the falls leaving its traces in the frayed edges of my clothes.