December, 2022

After leaving the very comfortable mall in Margapatta I grab a rickshaw for the ride back to Burning Ghat Road.  On our way the driver takes a short cut that brings us into a teeming night market I had not seen before.  I ask the driver to stop, saying I want to get out and briefly explore the market.  He tells me it is “wery dangerous, not good place, good sir.”  But in my ongoing euphorically distorted state I say I don’t care, that I want to walk around and see it for ten or fifteen minutes, that he can wait for me if he chooses, or he can go on and I will pay him for this portion of the ride.  “No, sir, I not vait here,” he tells me, “wery dangerous place.  No good place.  No vait, Sir.”  “Okay,” I say, “but what can be dangerous, look at all the people, the lights, just stop and let me off.”  So he stops, I get out, I reach into my pocket for my money and he says, “I vait.”  “Ten minutes,” I yell skipping off, “fifteen at the most,” as I implement my now well practiced Indian street crossing maneuver of attaching myself to a group of people already in the roadway, trusting that if they don’t get hit by a motorcycle or a car, I won’t get hit either.

Once in the market I am swept up in its festive air.  It is crowded beyond a 42^nd street merchant’s dream.  Loud fast Indian music is being blasted from speakers throughout.  There are vendors everywhere, kids’ rides, men blowing and selling bubble blowing devices, balloons, cooking fires, phosphorescent lights that people have on and are twirling, and even one darkly dressed Indian woman wearing a pair of lit up red devil’s horns on her head that make her into a very eerie visage and signal a change in aura of the scene, because no sooner have I seen the woman with the horns than I am surrounded by a pack of eight or nine hyperactive boys who I gauge to be ten to fourteen years old and who want to shake my hand, hold my hands, touch me, and are saying things in English that make no sense, and in Hindi that I obviously don’t understand, but are all extremely animated (and a little too close and intimate), and … it slowly dawns on me … are asking for or demanding money, I can’t tell which.  But I just keep smiling, giving them high fives, shaking hands, laughing, saying “no, no, no,” and moving deeper into the market.  And soon they are gone. 

I am reminded here of a sweet note I got recently from my high school friend Susan Levine who said she would never do what I am doing on this trip, but perhaps, she speculates, I get away with it, or think I can get away with it, because of my size.  Who knows?  In short order I’ve explored all I want to explore of the market, have really enjoyed my little foray, and am headed back out through the crowd when I encounter the crowd of young boys again, still screaming, still a little too frenzied and bold, only now swollen to a pack of about fifteen or twenty youths.  An event I witnessed in the Bronx 60 years ago, which I have not thought about for decades, flashes with remarkable detail as I recall a pack of kids I knew of the same age as this group of boys attack a much larger nineteen or twenty year old man. 
As I saw the event then, and even as I think about it now, my initial inclination would be to bet on the far bigger stronger man, not believing then, or even now that I have been proven wrong, than the pack of much smaller young boys could beat and bring down the bigger man.  But they did, and I see it with great clarity.  Maybe the man was adverse to the fight, or maybe the boys drew blood early and it scared him, or maybe at first he didn’t take it seriously, or didn’t want to hurt kids smaller and younger than himself, and clearly in hindsight he shouldn’t have backed up to the parked car as he did, thinking perhaps that he was protecting his rear flank when in fact the car provided a launching pad for the younger boys to climb on and jump on him, and take away his height advantage, and deny him room to move and swing freely and turn.  I really don’t know.  But I do know the younger boys won that fight, and bloodied him badly, and dropped him to the ground, and kicked him until he was curled in a ball crying for mercy, and no one intervened to save him until then, speaking of indifference. 
And it is here in my reverie that I also make a mistake in the night market, because, still acting as if we are all just having a jolly old time, I impulsively reach into my pocket, take out a Kit Kat bar I had purchased earlier, and hand it to the kid I perceive as the leader of the pack, saying at the same time, in what I intended to be a joking manner, “Now show some respect to an older man.” And the boy yells loudly, “Now show some respect to an older man.”  And the throng of boys chants responsively, “Now show some respect to an older man,” and the leader calls again, and the boys respond again, and have started touching me, and grabbing my ass, and pressing on the small back pack I’m wearing, and in my pockets, all the while as I move toward the entrance, waving at the vendors who care to look at the unfolding event, swatting boys’ hands away, holding on to my wallet, passport, and cash in my left front pocket with my left hand, waving and swatting with my right.  And smiling, of course.  And trying to keep the mood jocular.  And hoping the rickshaw driver is still there as I use the throng of boys to move blindly forward into the roadway, reaching the rickshaw, getting into the rickshaw while five or six of the boys try to get into the rickshaw with me, each saying words akin to, “Take me home with you,” as the driver starts to move forward, easing into the roadway, where the boys are forced to peel away, and the driver shakes his head and scolds me, saying, “I tell Sir wery bad place.”  And after putting what he considers to be an adequate distance between us and the market says, “Sir check money and bag,” and I say, “No, no, it’s all good,” and am really feeling good.  And even as I write this I cannot tell you whether it was all in fun, or threat, or something else we will ever know.  And while it may be “odd” to say this, from my perspective I mostly enjoyed the overall experience – that’s mostly – and was mostly comfortable in it, and I would do it again.

I visit the shopping center, a mall I suppose you might call it, that services the Margapatta community in which the yoga studio I’ve been going to is located: green grocers, little shops selling kitchenware, ice cream and pizza shops, Indian fast food joints, restaurants, cyber cafes.  It is Sunday night after 9 PM and the place is alive with people: teens, younger people, clusters of men and women in their twenties, gatherings of women chatting, of men chatting, young couples, young families, young women in jeans, men in shorts, it is all very familiar except for the fact everyone here is Indian, everyone is eating with their fingers and then licking their hands clean, all the signs are in Hindi, the lighting is not quite what we are used to, and I am the only non Indian person there … and very comfortable.