Ominous fog has come to rest over the city during the night. I am leaving Varanasi's yin and yang mix of calming ghats and holy mess of crammed labyrinthine streets for some more peaceful climes. Standing in the crowded entrance hall of Patna Junction station and the man at the enquiry desk has just confirmed to me there are no trains south because of the fog so I plod back out to the murky street to look for alternatives.
Just standing at street level in India is a deafening experience. Lorries, rickshaws and motorcycles clatter past you, all loose metal and persistent wailing horns stinging your ears. Bovines and canines alike lie down to doze among tyres and wing-mirrors that skim their fur as they pass by. You can in fact, within reason, walk straight out into oncoming traffic and it simply flows around you like water. In the periphery of the traffic's roar people have themselves shaven, their clothes mended and shoes polished. They eat samosas and pakoras, drink chai and chew paan and excrete all of this into the very same gutter. This cocktail offers a fluctuating aroma of spices, urine, incense and fumes depending on the direction of your nostrils at a given moment.
This is street life, the very same form of life that existed in Western cities and which has since been sterilised into polished concrete high-streets or engulfed by the business of the great malls. Part of the 'magic' of India is of course that this kind of world still exists and why tourists come to be caught up in the cacophony. India delivers the intense multi-sensory stimulation that some people crave when living in comparatively sober cities, myself included. However, there are negative aspects to all this 'stimulation', namely that many of the cities are swimming in rubbish.
So where are all the rubbish men I naively ask to myself. I am curious as to where much of the money comes from (or doesn't come from) to keep the infrastructure of large Indian cities running. After some reading I discover that only 2.9% of Indians pay tax. Indians are only required to pay tax if they earn over Rs-200,000 per year which the vast majority of Indians do not. The average annual salary in India is Rs-20,000 or USD-$295. Of those who can afford to pay tax around 80% of this workforce is classified as 'informal', i.e. they work for themselves and do not file tax returns. Of the 14,800 millionaires in India, most of these exploit the myriad loopholes in the convoluted tax system to avoid paying tax much like millionaires in other parts of the world. Thus, those that do pay tax tend to be those who work for large companies and have the tax deducted automatically from their salaries. The total tax revenue for India then is around Rs-30.3 trillion (USD-$450 billion) which is roughly the same as the total tax revenue for Australia, a country with a population 54 times smaller. There is precious little cash to pay for the infrastructure needed to clean up the cities. Recycling plants have been built around some cities, Kolkata for example, but there isn't the infrastructure to collect the rubbish from around the city nor the tax revenue to pay for the electricity to power them so many are operating at nowhere near capacity. For those to whom the streets are home or a workplace, picking their way through the rubbish for now is the only option.
People watching amidst the ordered chaos I notice the unique personalities attached to each hawker of travel. The quietest and most methodical humans are the cycle rickshaw drivers. They pedal rhythmically around the city waiting to be accosted for service. Any reasonable sum on payment seems acceptable and they are very grateful, touching their heads and hearts with the money and bowing graciously in thanks.
The auto-rickshaw drivers are born of an utterly different skin. Native hustlers, before every journey an agreed destination and price must be hammered out. Passengers are then swerved against traffic from all directions to reach their destination. And the destination does invariably arrive given the unspoken but fully understood laws of the road: the bigger your chariot the greater your powers of parting the sea.
The bus drivers work as a team to a similar effect to the rickshaw drivers but with distinct personalities and roles within the unit. Given the fog's disabling effect on the trains it is by bus that I am making my way south from Patna, one of the oldest cities in the world though you wouldn't guess it from the stacks of white painted concrete apartments carpeting the city, on my way to Buddhism's holy city of Bodhgaya.
My bus has a team of three: the nucleus is a stoic and hyper-alert driver who swings his weight around the steering wheel careening several tonnes of steel through the clogged streets and a conductor in possession of a powerful set of lungs who yells 'Gaya!' the second we come into earshot of likely customers. There is a third assistant who appears to flit around the bus as it stops and starts like a loose electron wrapping his knuckles on the side of the bus whenever the driver has to thread the vehicle through a particularly tight gap - a kind of human parking sensor. As soon I am ushered onboard an episode of shouting and spitting of Hindi between the driver and the conductor erupts. It appears something has been lost as there is much frantic searching around the bus and presumed accusations being thrown. There is a point at which our driver seems genuinely offended and angrily shakes a pointed finger back at the conductor. An elderly passenger caught in the crossfire eventually waves his hand as a signal for the two to finalise their squabble and get the bus moving. We shuffle our way, twisted bumper to twisted bumper, out of the acre of mud that is the main bus terminal. Looking down through the grubby bus window I can hear and see shrieks and animated gestures from other bus conductors as they hook Indians tiptoeing on bricks through the terminal's chocolatey sludge up and onto their buses.
Not long into our journey our harried driver attempts to undertake a bus parked in the centre of the road narrowly missing a man stepping down from the bus with his son. The bus judders to a halt and belongings are flung forwards. More rapid-fire Hindi is blasted between the driver and the affronted man. The aggression seems wholly unnecessary but I assume is the result of an antagonised lifetime spent cutting up and being cut up on Indian roads. Shouts of 'challo' ('let's go') from the back of the bus leave the business between our driver and the man in the street unfinished.
Minutes later we run into a rickshaw driver flouting the law of size by blocking a narrow stretch of country road, refusing to submit to the bus. This is too much for the conductor and the driver who both explode into another installment of yelling and flailing. Arms gesture furiously and a seemingly unsavoury flavour of Hindi is showered down onto the rickshaw driver. Still there is no movement so the conductor springs down from the bus to explain in more detailed terms the essence of unofficial Indian road traffic law. There is cupping of necks and butting of heads and neither is willing to move. Instead we edge precariously through the ditch at the side of the road, the third assistant on the bus gathers up the seething conductor who is still fervently gesticulating and we continue on our way.
After four sub-comfortable hours at the front of the bus on top of the gearbox, surrounded by my bags and with my ample legs stowed somewhere up near my ears we arrive in Bodhgaya. I vow not to take another bus in India unless I absolutely have to. A very senior Tibetan monk is visiting Bodhgaya and the main Mahabodhi Temple Complex is filled with Tibetan Buddhist monks who are spending several months here while the cold winter takes hold in Tibet. I make my way with them through the Temple Complex to the Bodhi Tree that flanks the Mahabodhi Temple. I sit at the back and a monk near me kindly offers me a cushion. After the aggression of the journey south I am now able to shut my eyes and sit peacefully among the gently chanting monks for the next two hours. Such is the energy here that my mind doesn't wander and I am able to soak up the calm with minimal concentration. It feels to my mind like applying moisturiser to incredibly dry skin does or shampoo to your hair when it's really dirty.
It's is certainly not an easy task but it is possible to find some peace in India and this invariably involves finding a sacred place. Even then, despite the fact that many of the streets are too narrow to fit anything larger than a motorcycle down, Varanasi is far from a tranquil haven and more of a thumping celebration of Hindu culture. Thankfully most of the temples in Bodhgaya lie away from the hum of the streets so this is a perfect place to spend some time before re-entering the the clamour in Kolkata.