The City

Today I went to the city. I spent too much money, I made a friend and I am happy to be home. Having been in Guwahati for 3 weeks I wanted to see what the city was all about, so armed with my gamusa I took an auto-rickshaw to Uzan Bazaar on the banks of the Brahmaputra and started looking for the ferry to Peacock Island. I could see the temple on top of the island from shore – it wasn’t very far away – but for all the map consulting I couldn’t find the damn ferry so I walked inland to buy stuff. I soon realized that the Pan Bazaar was where I came my first day with the Australians to buy art supplies and nervously try to eat some fried rice so that made it a little more familiar. I got the autobiography of Gandhi (when in India…) and Jules Verne’s Spaeth family classic Mysterious Island, and a bottle of wine for making pasta sauce for the family on Sunday night. The wine man smiled wide when he saw that I had a gamusa stuffed in my backpack. I decided that the ferry couldn’t be too hard to find so I walked back out to Mahatma Gandhi Road to have a look…sure enough, it was still hard to find. I must have passed the same blind beggar 5 times. He was probably the only one who didn’t notice the American walking back and forth under the employment tents and past the judges’ residences with well-kept gardens. Finally I gave up and started walking toward the Fancy Baazar but before I got there someone said, “Boat? Island?” and I said, “Okay.”

I read that in India sometimes you have to resign yourself and get swept away, so with that in mind I got on the aluminum roof of a boat with a handsome English-speaking man and motored into the Brahmaputra. The boat ride ended up being 500 rupees instead of the 10 the ferry charges (it probably was not 50 times better) but still only $9.something and it came with Kamal, a guide/translator/friend. I was skeptical but friendly and he told me a little about the mythology and showed me the temple and walked me around the island. In the meantime his friend, the boat owner, had left without notice so we sat and talked with the ferry manager. By the time I got back to shore he had invited me to his house and to a festival. I wanted to trust him but I’m not in a position to start making friends that live an hour away across town, so I thanked him and left. The Fancy Bazaar was a bunch of people and clothes and shoes and saris so when I found The Paradise Hotel I ate lunch, pricy by American standards, horrendously expensive by Parijat standards, and caught another auto-rickshaw home.

I was so happy to be back in my neck of the woods! The first cows I saw in the road made me smile because it meant I was almost home. Garchuk is just a wide spot in the road but I know Prodip and his convenience store that sells me soap and mango juice and I recognize the rickshaw driver and the one mangy billy goat and the thankful drunk man thanks me. I say hi to each house and it says hi back. I learned one important thing today – that I am perfectly content to stay in Pamohi. I know that sometimes something interesting will happen with little or no notice and the rest of the time I can read or play with hostel kids. Normally I would consider this lazy but I don’t - I am happy to enjoy the village life.