The Afternoon Visitors

Camel Ride

There were many reasons why camels had caught my fancy when I was quite young. I had seen pictures of them in my alphabet and rhyme books (“c for camel” often came to mind). I had seen a couple of them at the Byculla zoo, tossing their big untidy heads impatiently while chewing what seemed to be a perpetual cud.

And my paternal grandparents had told me about them. They said that they would see camel-drawn carts in Delhi during their decades-long sojourn there. And, then, they had gone into camel country itself, so to speak, when following his retirement after spending almost four decades of his life in government service, my grandfather took up a two-year appointment as chief financial advisor to the Maharaja of Bikaner in Rajasthan around 1940.

My grandparents described what they had seen and heard about an old tradition and celebration, the camel festival, where at the beginning of each year, in mid-winter, camel owners came from all over the Thar desert, bringing their camels with them. For a few days, against the undulating sand dunes, everyone celebrated with camel processions, dances, acrobatics, competitive games and sports, and food. There were melas, country fairs, that drew hundreds.

Later, I also remembered reading and hearing, when I reached my early teens, that the legendary camel festivals start with processions of camels from all over Rajasthan, decked out in multicolored bridles, bejeweled necks, and jingling anklets. During the camel pageants, proud owners show off their camels' decorations and jewelry. Highlights include camel dances and acrobatics performances, with the large ungainly creatures somewhat incongruously displaying intricate footwork and graceful movements while being directed by their owners.

There are apparently also tug-of-war contests, neck-swaying camel races, and competitions for best fur-cutting design, camel milking, and best camel haircut. In addition, I read of the Mr. Desert contest, where the local men compete for the trophy of the best turned-out man, judged by the size and imposing nature of their moustache, turban, ornaments, and overall appearance.

Throughout the festival, visitors are said to enjoy tea and sweets made of camel milk and to participate in a variety of village games. Evenings feature folk performances such as skirt-swirling dances and fire dances. The opening and closing ceremonies are typically held in the  desert with the sun setting beyond the sand dunes. I saw breathtaking pictures and footage of these performances and they thrilled me at some deeper level.

Somehow all of this must have been playing in the background of my mind when, during a dry phase in the middle of the monsoon season in the late 60s, my parents and the three of us happened to pay a visit to Juhu Beach on a quiet weekend morning. At the beginning of the previous year, we had all moved back to our old apartment in Bombay, expecting that my father would be able to arrange for a job transfer back there. That did not happen and so, for the next three years, he stayed on in New Delhi and instead visited us in Bombay every few months and we went to Delhi during summer and winter vacations to spend time with him until such time as I would complete high school a couple of years later and we could all move back to New Delhi. Interspersed with school, our studies at home and vacations in the north, this phase was nevertheless an interesting one, while being mildly disruptive with all the periodic traveling up and down for all concerned.

It was still relatively early in the morning that sultry day in August and, while there was no rain, the sun was behind large grey clouds covering the sky. But we knew that we were out spending the day with our fun-loving father on one of his periodic visits and our  occasionally-concerned looking mother and the beach was beckoning with its pleasant associations from our childhoods. We strolled on the beach, walked into the sea knee-deep and splashed in the waves for some time and then walked back onto the sands looking for a dry patch but there was none. It had rained hard some days back and the sand everywhere was still damp. We knew that even the old rolled-up straw mat we had in the car would soak through in a matter of minutes.

We bought some hot freshly roasted peanuts and grams shovelled into paper cones by a man sitting before a large basket and leaned against a stone wall snacking on them, loath to leave the beach but having no dry place to sit and enjoy the scenery. It was then that we noticed the camel and its owner. We had seen them in the distance against the curving stretch of beach and the grey sky beyond it, growing smaller and smaller like a receding dot on the horizon. And then, we weren’t sure when, they grew larger and appeared closer and closer until they were about twenty feet away, the animal stooping to sit as the young man tugged at the reins and yelled to it, ostensibly directing it to stay put. He came towards us. “Camel ride, sir? Camel ride, madam? Camel ride, miss? Very cheap…”

My mother shook her head vigorously and motioned to the man to leave. We said no, too, almost reflexively from long experience of dissuading street pedlars trying to sell us wares we didn’t need. But the young man didn’t even seem to be noticing any of us. He was looking at my father with an expectant smile, saying “Camel ride, sir? Only rupees ….” I noticed that my father had that look on his face that said “Well, why not?”

They arrived speedily at a consensus in a moment that the rest of us were not even aware of. My father straightened up and rallied us. “Come on, let’s go for a camel ride!” My mother’s face was a treat to behold. Her eyes looked startled and huge. She could barely talk. Her mouth opened and shut a few times. “No,” she said finally. “I cannot do it. I cannot get up on that camel. Not with a sari. I’ll slide off. Actually, we’ll all slide off. Look at its sides. Are you sure we should be doing this?” My father said, reaching out to her. “Certainly. Come on, I’ll hold you close the whole way. You can sit in front of me.”

“No!” she insisted, moving adroitly out of his reach. “I know what I can and cannot do. I know that I will not be able to do this. Not in a nylon sari. It is very slippery... You can … go ahead. Perhaps the girls can join you if they want to …?” Her voice trailed away into silence and I knew that she was having second thoughts the moment she said it. Her concern had quickly moved from herself to us, and now she was clearly beginning to worry about us getting up on that animal. Anything could happen…

“There’s nothing to worry about.” My father had picked up on her concern too, I knew. “It’s just a ride on the back of a camel. I have done it before. The girls have sat horseback before and ridden around the gardens in Adenwala Park. This is just a different kind of animal. And the camel owner will be there too.”

“What will we sit on and what do we hold? “ I suddenly wondered aloud. “The horses at the park all have saddles and reins.”

The camel owner was watching our faces and our interactions and interjected “Saddle hai!”. “Aap ayeeyey. Khudh dekhiyey. Come, sir. See for yourself. Come, madam, come, miss.”  He hurried towards the camel, motioning to us to follow. As we drew closer, we could see the raised hard edges of a larger saddle with multiple seats and a wide colorful apron covering the hump of the camel.

The young man pointed to himself and the front of the saddle to let us know that he would be sitting there. Then he pointed to us and suggested that we had to come up with a sitting arrangement behind him. My mother still held back and my youngest sister clung to her, wide-eyed, apparently choosing not to go either.

My father paused and looked at all of us. “All right” he said easily to the two of them. “Wait here for us. We’ll just take a round of the beach and be back.” My father, my middle sister and I turned away and walked towards the animal which sat on the sands, snorting gently as it chewed its cud. As we neared it, I felt a bit nervous. How on earth were we going to climb onto this creature? It was like a little hillock with sloping sides. At first, I had wondered how we were all going to fit on it as a family of five. But now, at close quarters, I noted that it was bigger than it had looked from a distance. I saw that the three of us would fit on that sloping expanse of its back, with room to spare.

While I had been considering our seating possibilities, it seemed that my sister had been trying to make eye contact with the camel. An animal aficionado from a very early age, she moved close to it. “Hello, Camel” she stretched out her hand towards the large untidy head. The animal ignored her with a regal air at first, and then, as she persisted, it glared insolently at her and spat out a chewed piece of straw in her direction. My sister retreated quickly. “It’s not nice. I don’t like it. And I don’t think it likes us. Actually, I think it hates us! Look at how it’s looking at us.” She was right, Its expression did look inhospitable and forbidding. To add to that hostile impression, it continued to snort indignantly a few times at no one in particular.

The young man clambered on and patted the animal’s broad curved neck. “Climb on.” he directed us. My father lifted up my sister and directed her on how to perch behind the camelier and hold on to a kind of perch handle that was part of the saddle. Then my father and I conducted some quick and informal experiments on the order in which we would seat ourselves in relation to the camel’s hump. We ended up with my father in the middle, holding my sister in front of him and me sitting behind my father and holding him around his middle, bringing up the rear. The camel’s back was wider than it seemed and our legs were spread out on either flank. At first, it had seemed like a practical arrangement, one that would hold us in place through a gentle camel walk on the beach. But now I wondered if some other position might have been better. Either way, it was too late now to make adjustments.

The camelier craned his neck to look backwards to see how we were doing and seemed to think that it was a satisfactory arrangement. He told us to hold tight to the ropes that he had passed on to us as the animal got to its feet. We tensed and the animal teetered forwards and backwards as it unfolded its sprawling feet and raised itself to its full standing position. We shifted and adjusted, having got shaken about in the process.

The camelier clicked his tongue and made other special sounds to communicate with the animal, slapping its neck and shoulders. It just stood there, swaying with us on top. He urged it to move and bounced up and down, digging his heels into the camel’s shoulders. And suddenly off we went.

From a standing position in which it rocked back and forth like a boat adrift in mid air, the camel suddenly lurched forward and started to move swiftly with large steps. Every time that it took a step forward, we went down and up again, as though we were on a small Ferris wheel. And then down again before an upswing. We all held on for dear life. I looked behind me at the camel’s nether region sloping downwards and I realized that it wouldn’t be difficult at all for me to slide down and off. I tightened my grasp on to my father’s middle while he reached behind reassuringly to hold me with one arm. I couldn’t glimpse my sister sitting in front of him but he seemed to have his other arm securely around her.

As we moved rapidly on the sands, the sea became a blue-gray blur, and I saw people on the beach watch us go by with startled expressions. That’s when I realized that this was not turning out to be a gentle ride on a camel at the beach. This was what my mother had  apprehended in her concern. I looked behind to see what my mother was thinking about this situation we had got into  but she and my sister were far behind us, looking like dots in the distance.

The camel ride seemed to take an eternity and I found that, in order to adapt, I had to somehow reconcile myself to it. The entire possibilities of the world and of life itself shrank to the point where we just existed as us on that animal’s back and I could not even imagine how it would all end. Then, our luck changed, miraculously. Our camel’s owner intensified his efforts to communicate with the animal and it seemed that he finally got across because the camel slowed down. It still loped along and we bounced gently up and down with its steps but I supposed that it couldn’t help the way it was built.

At one point when we had travelled so far on the long stretch of beach that I thought we must have reached Bandra, the young man guided the camel to make a wide and full turn and then we headed back in the direction we had come from. At first, because the camel was just strolling along with long jerky steps, I wondered how long it would take to get back to where my mother and sister were waiting for us. The camel owner was probably thinking the same thing because, to our amazement, he dug his heels into the animal’s sides again and goaded it on. It began to run and then, as he clicked his tongue and called to it tand pulled the ropes, the camel seemed to trot at a good speed. This happened a few more times. We just held on and I think we must each have prayed privately asking that we would get back safely.

Somehow, eventually, we returned to the place where our ride had begun. I could see my mother and youngest sister looking with an air of curiosity and relief at us as the camel lowered itself onto the sand in a kind of reversal of what had gone before. I have no conscious memory of how we clambered off its back. But I seem to remember that we were all three walking in a funny way with our torsos bent almost perpendicular to our legs which were splayed wide apart. It was as though our bodies had fused into this kind of position after that seemingly interminable ride. As we straggled towards the edge of the beach where our car was parked, the camel sat like a Sphinx, chewing its endless cud and ignoring us, disdainfully. My sister made a face at it. “What did I say?” she said. “It hates us!”

My father paid for our rides and the camel man went away, looking satisfied. I noticed that my father seemed a bit subdued and my mother and he were initially avoiding each other’s eyes. But we moved beyond the awkward moments and the rest of the day passed like a normal weekend. It was not until Monday when my father left for Delhi and my mother dropped us off at school when the full implications of our weekend treat struck me.

I was in the tenth-standard then, I had a year to go before my graduating school-leaving year, and our classroom was on the top floor of our large sprawling school building, accessible only through two long, high and sweeping flights of old-fashioned stairs. On each intervening high-ceilinged floor were the classrooms that my classmates and I had passed through, the primary and secondary sections of the school. Everyday, at school, like the others, I would carry my bag heavy with books up these flights, climbing each step steadily until I reached my destination - the tenth-standard classroom. Most days, I thought nothing of it and my calf muscles felt well-toned and supple.

But now, I despaired, just looking at the stairs rising before me. How on earth was I to climb these stairs? My legs were so sore and weary after that camel ride on the beach that I could barely put one foot before the other, let alone anticipate climbing up two long flights of stairs. I felt tired and hopeless.

My mind revolted, furiously. Why did I agree to that camel ride? I should have let my mother convince my father that it wasn’t a good idea. And I myself could have declined. He would not have forced me to go. But then didn’t people ride camels every now and again? Just as people rode horseback - a practice that probably went back some millennia.  And so on. I wanted the experience.

For some reason, I remembered now, hearing from a friend in New Delhi about how she and her sister had gone on an elephant ride when they visited their aunt who was living in the south of India. It was to be one of the highlights of their stay. But, they soon realized that sitting across an elephant’s broad back with one’s legs spread out was not comfortable. And nor was the experience of having the elephant hair rise like miniature needles and poke them through their thick denim jeans, as the elephant’s excitement peaked as it began to run rather than walk. My friend had told me that her sister and she were bruised and aching for days afterwards. But later, it had become a story to be amused by and to be laughed at. It restored perspective, refreshed the brain. Laughter after the experience is over can be a good thing, I thought bleakly, but how do you get through the experience as it is taking place?

Surveying the flight of stairs before me, I wondered about an elevator, a lift. I thought I remembered seeing one in the corridor but we students were not supposed to use it. Some of the older nuns and teachers or important visitors might use it. As I stood, assessing the stairs and my ability to take them on, one of the nuns saw me and came up to see what was wrong. I tried to explain that my legs and back muscles were very sore and I didn’t see how I could possibly climb two flights in time for school assembly and class. And, then, I realised with dismay that I would have to go up and down a few more times all in the course of the day, to attend the advanced science classes and lab sessions with Mrs. Smith, and music class with Ms. Davidson, both on the lower intervening floor. How was I going to manage it? The nun had a sympathetic look on her face but it was mixed with puzzlement. “But what did you do to hurt yourself?” she asked “What happened?”

I told her about the camel ride, the camel’s behavior, everything that took place. And then I saw her face. The look of understanding had disappeared, replaced by a look of incredulity. Her mouth fell open and she looked startled and speechless. I could imagine her thinking: “... a camel ride on a beach! Whatever for? Oh, these people…”

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My Indian Childhood

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