The old man in Orchha

She said, "Give him a glass." He said, "No." "Why not?" she persisted. "Servants cannot drink from masters' glasses," he replied. Just a few hours earlier, a bus had screeched to a halt in the dusty centre of Orchha in central India and I had alighted.

The shack was open on all sides. You could enter from anywhere. Twisted wooden poles, each in a slightly different angle, held up a tattered, sky blue tarpaulin sheet. Or rather it must have been sky blue when it was bought. Now it looked as if the sky was covered with dark, dirty clouds. Instead of a signboard with the name of the restaurant, there was a board advertising a brand of bottled water. From a jute string tied between two poles, Lay's chips packets were strung. The air smelled of agarbattis (incense sticks) which slowly smouldered as a mark of respect to Hindu deities. Water dripped with a constant tip, tip, tip from a leaking tap. Cracked, some broken, plastic tables were haphazardly strewn between the angled wooden poles. I brushed the dirt off a plastic chair and sat down at 8 a.m., for breakfast.

Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a long, printed cotton skirt and a light grey top with sleeves that almost covered her elbows. The top was buttoned up to the neck, with no hint of cleavage. Her face and lips were bereft of any make-up or lipstick. She wore flat sandals. She wore no perfume. She did not want to attract any attention to herself. She was a solo woman travelling through India. She pulled up a chair, that scraped with a rough noise on the mud floor, in an adjoining table and sat down. She asked the owner of the shack in an American accent, "What's for breakfast?"

The shack owner was a thin man with fat cheeks. His long black hair fell over the collar of his check shirt. The crumpled shirt was not tucked into his pants. His trousers were dark green, a little short and frayed at the bottom. He wore two gold rings, one on his left ring finger and one on his right. He smelled of sweat. He wiped some of it off his forehead with the sleeves of his shirt. A part of his tikka (vermillion paste) that he had applied on his forehead, also came off. He swirled his upturned moustache with his left hand and said in Hindi, "I have samosas, bread pakodas and jalebi." She turned towards me. She had hetero-chromatic eyes - her right eye was blue and her left eye was bluish-green. She must have been in her late 30's. Or perhaps she was in her 40's.

She asked me, "Can you help me decipher?"

"Samosa is a fried, triangular pastry filled with spicy potatoes. Bread pakodas are fried bread slices dipped in batter. And jalebis are fried flour pretzels, soaked in sugar syrup," I deciphered.

An old man with a bent back limped into the shack. His unkempt grey hair was knotted with dirt. He wore thick glasses with a plastic frame. The lens on the left was cracked. He wore an orangish-yellow T-shirt, the colour of the early morning sun behind him, with the word 'Vancouver' on it. But the T-shirt was soiled and was more like the setting sun merging into the dusty horizon. His torn trousers were too long for him. He had rolled them up so that they fit. He was barefoot with his toenails cracked. His hands were streaked with mud and they were caked up under his fingernails. The veins spread out like roads on a Google map. The skin rose from his thin hands like cumulus clouds. Protein deficiency. The woman beckoned him. She took out a pack of wet wipes from her bag and started cleaning his hands.

"Where did you get the T-shirt?" she asked.

"A white woman gave it to me." I was translating.

"I am from Vancouver." She was Canadian.

"What will you eat?" she asked

"Glucose biscuits (cookies) and tea."

"He needs proteins." "Can he get an omelette?" she asked the shack owner.

"Orchha is a vegetarian village. Eggs and meat are not allowed inside the village limits."

The tea was served to him in a plastic cover, along with a pack of glucose biscuits. She asked, "How will he drink his tea?"

"He will sip it from the plastic bag," said the shack owner.

"Give him a glass."

"No."

"Why not?" she persisted

"Servants and beggars cannot drink from masters' glasses." 

The blood rose to her face, fuelled by her Canadian egalitarian spirit. She walked over to the store next door and bought a brand-new glass.

"A glass for you," she told the old man.

"You could have bought one of my glasses and given it to him," said the shack owner.

She said, "No. Servants and beggars don't drink from masters' glasses."

Afternote

A noted American author of several travel books asked me to challenge myself. He asked me to write 800 words, by choosing one tiny event that happened during my travels. This is the product of that challenge. Feel free to critique it.

Have you come across elitism during your travels? If so, where?

Comments please! Thou shalt get a reply!

Have you read my previous blog? Click on this link to read, 'The road to Bhutan': http://kodavarthi.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-road-to-bhutan.html

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