The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 3
“I am sorry about this. There has been a mistake and you must leave. Here is your money. Please go,” the manager says as he stuffs rupees into my hand.
Indignant, I stand my ground, refusing to leave, slapping the money down on the desk. “I’ll call the police,” I announce reflexively, surprising even myself.
The word “police” has a pronounced effect: every eye in the TV room turns toward me. Small white packages begin appearing and disappearing, slipping from hand to hand until one person bolts for the exit. The manager is breathing heavily, his hands curled into tight fists. A woman dressed in a bikini races up the stairs shrieking, “Mahout, Mahout…” Suddenly I realize this is not a normal hotel. I’m about to apologize and leave quietly, when an athletic-looking man breezes into the lobby. His clothes are finely tailored and his bearing elegant. His hair is combed straight back, flipping just below his silk collar.
“Hell-o,” he says in a refined English accent. “Welcome to the Grand Life Hotel. Is there a problem?”
The manager speaks too quickly for me to understand everything, but what I do comprehend is insulting. As he finishes, I announce my departure. They can keep the deposit.
“No, wait! You must stay if you wish to,” the elegant man says to me. “I am Mahout. What’s your name?”
We talk for several minutes, and Mahout’s graciousness makes me relax. People slowly return to the TV room, and the manager hands me the key to room seven. Mahout takes the key from me and returns it to the manager.
“Give him room thirteen,” he commands, and then says softly to me, “Thirteen is a lucky number in India. I am sure you will like it.”
Escorting me up the marble stairway, Mahout pauses on the first step to look me in the eye. “As you can guess, the police are not welcome visitors at the Grand Life. I think you can understand… Good. How about dining with me tonight, say around eight?”
Room thirteen is bigger than my entire apartment in New York. Four windows overlook the street where a group of children play cricket. Butted against a pale yellow wall is the largest bed I’ve ever seen. Off in a corner, under one of the eleven mirrors in the room, sits a long writing desk. Twenty-nine steps from the door is the bathroom, with twin sinks, tub, and shower. I climb into the shower after hanging my jacket close to the billowing steam, hoping some of the wrinkles will disappear.
Later that afternoon I find the line at Lok Nayak Bhavan longer than the day before, but it seems to be moving faster. Attitude, I tell myself, it’s all a matter of attitude.
I enter the undersecretary’s office with my hand extended, confident in myself and my purpose. The seated official doesn’t even look up from his papers. I clasp the back of a chair and introduce myself.
“So you are the man looking for the duck,” he says, removing his reading glasses to eye me. “Did you make an application for travel permits through our consulate in New York?”
“Yes, but this one is different,” I say.
Months ago, while applying for my entry visa, I had filled out a similar but shorter form. I never received a reply, and several officials at the consulate told me not to worry, that applications often get lost in transit.
“I have your original application in front of me. You request unrestricted travel… Pan-India, you say.”
“That’s true. Sir, but that was before I knew where to look for the pink-headed duck. This new application is only for the Tista and Brahmaputra rivers.”
“Which of these applications do you want me to consider?” the undersecretary asks, putting his glasses back on.
“Well, Sir, of course I’d like permission to travel everywhere.”
“I can answer that right now. No.”
The official opens a drawer and pulls out a black plastic comb, which he runs through his hair several times.
“Well? What else?” he says impatiently, putting the comb back in the drawer.
“How about the rivers? Can I follow them?”
“The Tista is off limits. Northern Sikkim is a military zone. Sorry.”
“All of the river is off limits?”
“For you and other westerners, yes.”
I know that northern Sikkim is a frontier post for eighty thousand Indian troops, one soldier for every four residents of that tiny mountain state. The army is massed along the border with Tibet to prevent a repeat of the Chinese invasion of 1962, when Mao’s Red Army stormed into India. But the giant rhododendron forest and the branch of the Tista leading to it are far from any military installation, a fact I mention to the undersecretary.
“That is interesting… Tourists don’t usually know such things,” he says.
“I’ve done some research.”
“My answer is still the same. No,” he says, returning to his paperwork.
“One last question, if I may,” I entreat. “What about the Brahmaputra?”
“Hmm, I doubt it, but I will have to check before telling you no. Come back tomorrow. That is all… Good-bye.”
That evening, when I visit Mahout in his elaborate suite, my somber mood brightens. He had told me that he enjoyed the finer things in life, and his apartment is testimony to that. If he likes something, he buys it, no matter how it may challenge the rest of the decor. Fine Persian miniatures hang next to large Dutch paintings in gilt frames; antique statuary sits atop banks of audio and video equipment; two contemporary chairs are lost behind a thick oak table that Henry VIII might have used.
“I am in the import/export trade,” he says. “I travel a lot… The gods have been kind to me in this life.”
While we eat and drink, we trade stories about our lives. As a boy he answered to the name Arun, and he lived a privileged life as the son of a wealthy merchant in Madras. “Then I went to Cambridge and was nicknamed Mahout when I climbed over a fence at the zoo and rode an elephant as a prank.”
With dessert we have champagne, and by the end of the second bottle our friendship is sealed. He confides that he’s more than just an importer/exporter, adding the title “gentleman outlaw” to his resume. This, I’m told, means that he shuns violence, guns, heroin, and anything involving children.
“I support many good causes,” he says defensively. “I’ve met Mother Teresa.”
Next morning the sky is bright and clear, save the lone black cloud hovering over the Home Ministry. I arrive there an hour early and find myself near the front of the line. The undersecretary greets me cordially before turning me over to a clerk. “Follow him,” he orders. “Someone wants to meet you.”
We walk down a long hallway with mustard-colored walls and pea-green floors to a small office where two men wearing shiny suits await me. They offer me a cigarette and tell me to sit down. The taller of the two explains that the tape recorder on the desk will help him remember our conversation.
“Welcome to India,” the other man says. He is short and skinny and keeps at least one cigarette going at all times. “Would you please tell us about this duck?”
I explain. They stare at me or blow smoke rings. An unnerving silence punctuates the end of my report. Finally the short man shakes his head and says, “This is hard to believe.”
It takes me almost forty minutes to convince them that I’m harmless, that my knowledge of army bases comes from research at newspaper offices. At last the tall man looks me straight in the eye and says, “You really are looking for this red duck, huh?”
“Pink.”
“Whatever… Sounds crazy. What will you do if you find this duck?”
“I’m not sure. I want to learn its song and…”
He cuts me off and sends me back to the undersecretary, who tells me to return tomorrow.
Every day for the next week I dutifully appear at his office for news about my application, which I’ve revised for travel only on the Brahmaputra. I become acquainted with the guards and clerks at the Home Ministry. If I buy the tea, they let me share in their gossip and join their card games during lunch break. Talk usually centers on their work, families, and favorite TV programs. They’re fascinated by American stars. “What’s Kojak like?… How big is Hoss?… Is your president still acting?…”
Many people advise me to offer bribes to the undersecretary. Mahout claims that baksheesh—what he calls “tokens of gratitude”—is the grease of Indian commerce. The notion repels me. In all of my traveling, I’ve never paid a bribe and have no intention of starting now. This is a matter not only of principle but of fear. I’m certain I’d be caught. Mahout laughs, but my resolve is final. I’ll stick to buying pots of tea and paying for the odd lunch.
On my tenth day in Delhi the undersecretary smiles as I enter his office. He grabs my hand in an especially warm manner.
“I have an answer for you,” he says cheerfully. I’m ready to start packing for the trip. I wonder where I should invite him to lunch.
“Unfortunately, your request has been denied. You can’t go down the Brahmaputra,” he says. I plop into a chair. “Ah, this is so good. I mean that you are not yelling or angry. So many foreigners shout at me when I tell them no…”
“Will you change your mind if I start yelling?” I ask.
“Oh, please don’t. I hate it when they scream. Here is what you can do…” He recommends that I appeal the ruling and promises his help. He considers himself a generous man and makes a phone call on my behalf.
“The director will see you tomorrow… Don’t forget me. Come visit—I have gotten used to you.”
The Indian civil service is modeled on the English system. During the 150 years of the raj the English employed Indians as their administrative assistants and secretaries, the majordomos of Mother England. The empire founded schools and colleges to educate Indians for the civil service, sending many to graduate programs in Britain and providing opportunities for advancement based on tenure and merit, not caste. After independence, this tradition continued, so the bureaucracy is run by the same well-trained men and women no matter which party is in office.
The next day I finally meet the director, a man just two steps below the top rank in the service. At the moment, while his boss is on leave studying at Oxford, he’s in charge of all foreigners’ requests. Although he’s the official who denied my application, I find it impossible not to like him. We both chain-smoke and love chocolate. During the next two weeks I visit him every day, hoping for news about my appeal to the Review Board. We develop a friendship and usually spend an hour shooting the breeze, talking about newspaper headlines, sports, and his favorite topic, education in India.
Mahout is incredulous. “How can you spend so many hours with those boring people?”
I correct him, explaining that they’re not boring and that visiting the Home Ministry has become my job. No bureaucrat wants to help a self-righteous foreigner. Why should they? Patience is the key, I tell him; anyone petitioning the government must meet civility with untiring civility. I’m determined to find the pink-headed duck, and if that means spending a couple of weeks making small talk with bureaucrats, I won’t complain.
“It could take years! Lay out some cash,” Mahout trumpets.
“I’ll take my chances playing it straight.”
“You’re in India; do like Indians.”
“No, I’m an American in India, and I’d blow it.”
“You will come around. Want to bet?”
“No bet.”
Sixteen days after receiving my application for an appeal, the Review Board agrees to consider my case. The director cautions that the verdict is at least a month away; also he doubts they will overturn his decision.
“In India it takes just as long to be rejected as accepted,” he tells me.
“I’ll make a good impression during the interview.”
“What interview?”
“Don’t they want to talk to me?”
“No, that is not how it’s done… Take a break. Leave the capital for a while. Travel. Isn’t there someplace you want to visit?”
“Sikkim,” I reply without hesitation.
“Ah, they say Sikkim is beautiful, but there are restrictions. Hold on…” He flips through a dog-eared directory to check on travel regulations to the Himalayan state and offers me a special fifteen-day pass.
“This is the best I can do for you,” he says, stamping my passport with blue and red seals. Next to each he writes something in ballpoint.
“What’s that for?” I ask, pointing to his handwritten notes.
“There are only three towns you can visit: Gangtok, Rumtek, and Phodong. The rest of Sikkim is off limits.”
That night Mahout and I study the maps and discuss travel strategies. Two “colleagues” he has invited over describe the mountain areas they knew in their younger days as smugglers. Neither of them has a suggestion for reaching the uncharted tract in the far north.
“We only know the south. Nobody goes up there. There are no roads, no towns.”
“That’s why I want to go.”
“For a duck?”
“A pink duck.”
After we’ve polished off a bottle of Sikkimese Bagpiper scotch, Mahout offers professional advice: “Just go to Gangtok and figure things out from there.”
3
The Best Driver in All of Sikkim
From the air Sikkim looks like an enormous amphitheater hewn out of rock, bounded on three sides by the Himalayas. The main ridge lies to the north, and two spurs jut southward, sealing the former kingdom between Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. Only seventy miles long and forty wide, Sikkim boasts more than a thousand different species of orchid growing within its borders. No other place its size has such varied terrain, ranging from dense jungle to glacial plain. The rare snow leopard, the Himalayan black bear, and perhaps the yeti, as well as the pink-headed duck, are all part of its menagerie.
The British, always seeking to define the foreign in their own terms, called Sikkim the “Switzerland of Asia.” The original inhabitants, the Lepchas, named their majestic land “Nye-mae-el,” or heaven; like heaven, Sikkim is not an easy place to reach.
The plane from New Delhi flies over the state, but it lands about thirty miles below the border on the West Bengal plain. From the airport at Bagdogra, I take an auto-rickshaw to nearby Siliguri, the embarkation point for all buses to Sikkim. I arrive at the depot just in time to watch the last coach of the day to Gangtok disappear over the horizon.
Before 1955 Siliguri was best known for its frightening rates of malaria and infant mortality. Then oil was discovered in Assam, and the mineral wealth of the other northeastern states was uncovered. Because of its geographic position at the western end of the Northeast Corridor (a narrow bridge of Indian land running between Bhutan and Bangladesh, connecting Assam, Nagaland, and the five other northeastern states with the remainder of India), Siliguri became the region’s shipping and trucking center. Here the area’s major roadways converge, and the railroad track switches from broad gauge to the old narrow gauge installed by the British. The town expanded at a staggering pace and became a city. From the look of things, no one hired a planner or designer. Cinderblock is the height of architectural achievement. What is impressive is the number of gas stations lining the roads, scores of them, stretching for miles.
After visiting a few downtown hotels, I decide to sleep under the stars. The rooms aren’t expensive, but I’m concerned about what might be breeding in the closets. I eat dinner at a small restaurant, scooping my rice, dal, and vegetables with my fingers in the traditional manner. I try to ignore the man in the dapper polyester outfit who has seated himself at my table.
“You need a fork!” he says, signaling to a young waiter.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Don’t bother.”
“How can you be happy eating like a Kurd? I am educated and I know about diseases. Did you wash your hands?”
“Yes,” I lie. For a moment I see my mother in a pew of St. Jude’s asking God, “Is he washing his hands and brushing his teeth?”
“All foreigners need help in India, and I am the man for you. My name is Krishna, but please call me Chris.”
I decline his offer, pay the check, and pick up my bags. Chris doesn’t take the hint and tries to help. I shake my head, but he grabs a bag anyway. I catch his hand and say, “No thanks.”
He persists and I snarl, “Chow!” a slang word meaning, when said in anger, “Scram! Beat it, lowlife.”
The restaurant falls silent. I’ve gone too far, publicly embarrassing the man. Even if he’s a hustler, he has shown only friendly concern for me. I apologize loudly in Hindi, explaining that I’m tired and need sleep. Four other men dart into the street to summon a rickshaw.
“Hotel Sinclair,” Chris instructs the driver, “where all white people stay.”
No doubt he receives a commission for sending me to the fanciest hotel in the district. The rickshaw ride to the hotel takes twice as long as it would have taken me (if I had been polite) to send him off in search of other prey, and the room costs me thirty times the price of a drink and dinner. It’s an expensive lesson in manners.
At dawn I hurry to the Sikkim bus depot, expecting to secure a seat, but the yard is already jammed with people.
“Is it always this crowded?” I ask another passenger.
“Maybe,” he says, flashing lots of gum and one tooth.
“What do you mean, grandfather?”
“When I was young, there was nothing that made me feel crowded. Now that I am old, I see crowds everywhere. For you it should be easy, eh?”
“Right,” I say, gathering my pluck for the climb up the back of the bus to the roof. There’s a ladder, but the bottom rungs are missing.
“Step on the bumper, then the door hinge, and I will help you from there,” calls a voice from the roof. I follow the instructions and join about twenty people already clinging to the rooftop. The bus driver saunters down the path, stopping dead in his tracks when he sees me.
“Hey, what are you doing up there?” he yells.
“Going to Gangtok.”
“Have you ever been on this bus before?”
