The Strange Motel Mosque
Paharaganj, Delhi
After sweeping through the packed streets of Paharaganj, Delhi, past Bangladeshi beggars and pushy shopkeepers, I craved the relief of my hotel room, with its peeling paint and dirty black and white floors. I was working on erasing some dark circles under my eyes that had become permanent marks on my face during my time on the subcontinent.
While Hotel Namaskar was falling apart at the seams, its weariness was charming. Arabic writing swirled across the surface of the building’s open-air courtyard, where a handful of men kneeled on shabby carpets under thick shafts of sunlight. Above them towered four orange domes and a large rooftop. The men looked humble under such architectural majesty.
Down at the hotel reception, three men played a hard game of India’s national sport, carrom. They were waiting for their next gullible guest to appear and pay 100 rupees for a hole in the wall – to sell them their piece of Paharangaj prime real estate.
Some travellers referred to Paharaganj, Delhi as a wall-to-wall garbage dump, but that didn’t capture it. If a rubbish heap, it was one with yellow marigold flowers sprouting up in the most unusual places. Amid the crap, there was all types of life thriving.
On the first day in this place, I witnessed a young male chair-wallah shit on the street, without even a hint of shame, resuming his task of brewing chai in a large pot. Nearby, I heard the swishing of a soft sari skirt, the tinkle of gold bangles and the trumpet call of a colourful wedding parade. That moment summed up India – the crap and the colour mixed together. People said you either loved or hated India. I disagreed. You both loved and hated the place, and it was impossible not to feel both emotions.
A flickering Bollywood film played on a tiny television set in the reception area, while the hotel’s managers choked away on the cheapest of cigarettes – the ubiquitous Gold Flake variety – and drank illegal Kingfisher beer. Every now and again one of them would hock up whatever phlegm was left in his chest and spit it on the floor. At regular intervals they pointed their fingers at a timid teenage boy, who waited on their every command and brought them plates of delicious smelling food. The scent of cumin-spiced dahl and frying roti coming from the kitchen, obscured the outside stench of raw sewage.
With the crumbling mosque on the second level, and the gang of Indian hustlers down at reception, Hotel Namaskar struck me as an undecided place – one poised halfway between commercialism and spiritual redemption.
As the countdown to my departure began, I thought about the next time I would visit India. Maybe this was it and perhaps it was a good thing. At times this country made me feel like I had undergone an electric shock treatment with my body suffering immensely from it.
How would my hair recover? After some months in the country, it consisted of four pieces of rough string clumped together at the back of my head. However, I hadn’t managed to cultivate the full head of dreads that many travellers sported. Instead, my fringe was plastered to my forehead in swathes of old sweat. I looked neither suitably grungy nor well groomed.
Before the 40-plus degree summer day, the world’s second most populated city had been fairly kind to me. I felt I was savvy to it this time round and could deal with the onslaught of street hustlers and entrepreneurial beggars.
How wrong I was.
By the time the heat blanketed the city that day, I had been staying alone at the hotel for almost a week – moping about between the streets and my room, considering the meaning of loneliness in such a populated place, and reading books on Hinduism and Indian history. I had also spent a large part of my time arguing with rickshaw drivers to take me to markets to buy gifts for family members in one go, wishing I had stocked up on Rajhastani silver in Pushkar some weeks back. A common enough regret for any traveller.
On a whim, I started giving away my last rupees to all the beggars I came in contact with, to appease my guilt for not visiting orphanages in India and doing service as I had planned. In a show of foolish generosity, I gave a young group of boys 100 rupees each. A nearby driver yelled at me from inside his rickshaw.
“Why give to them, Madame? They only gamble it away, very wrong to give them such money. That is the trouble, you tourists come and give your money away thinking you are doing good, but you’re not,” he said, shouting in my face and waving his hands around madly. “Then they don’t work for their money,” he added.
This really incensed me because I knew he was right.
“Look, it is my decision when and where to give, and besides, I have no need for this money now,” I said, hopelessly trying to retain some dignity in this country.
Desperation was a neat little word that could have summed up those last days before I went home. I was a mess. My vanity was beginning to eat me apart. But somehow, I was still riding on the high of travel.
I wondered how the Indians managed to keep themselves so smooth-skinned, hair so lustrous in such a hot place. I followed Indian women into chemists and watched them buy their beauty products. I peered at them through stacked up shelves. Catching my gaze, with raised eyebrows, they looked at me like I was a crazy westerner. They were right.
Coconut hair oil turned my hair into a clumpy, greasy mess. I asked hair doctors how to keep mine healthy and shiny. They picked at my hair disconsolately, not knowing how to help this lost cause.
Determined to return home as a glowing, shiny-haired Indian goddess with chakras firmly aligned, I considered throwing on a sari and greeting my parents in Hindi when I returned to Australia. I wanted them to think that giving me their blessings to “find myself” had all been worth it. I was stable again, not the nutcase before I left. I knew they would laugh and call me a wanker, so I recovered my sanity and hand washed a black skirt to wear home to Brisbane. I vowed never to call myself Kali-Ma again.
My freedom in this place had been both intoxicating and frightening, but as the curtains were drawing around me, I felt a type of sick desperation take hold. A gnawing sense that I had no clear direction in my life had become stronger and stronger. In that last week I had been busy soaking up the atmosphere of this mad city, which was drenched in carbon monoxide from the generators that cranked up every time there was a power blackout.
I hoped I could summon those memories of sublime beauty when I was tapping away on some grey computer keyboard, in a dull office somewhere – like a burning sun setting over the rooftop, the desert town of Pushkar, the bewitching green eyes of a gypsy girl who danced in the streets for money.
On my last day I awoke to prayers to Allah, Brahmin bulls bellowing in the street and pigeons fluttering up to the top floor of the mosque. Every atom of sound space was occupied. A loud wedding band practised in a house nearby, and the noise of off-kilter trumpets blaring away destroyed my chance for a morning meditation session. I scoffed at the thought of India as the birthplace of transcendental meditation. What a joke! It was hard enough to close your eyes without someone clawing at you for money.
A rickety fan turned slowly above my head, some flies buzzed around my ear as I swatted them aggressively, feeling my patience wearing thin. I cursed the dust and dirt around me, and attempted, yet again, to wash myself with buckets of cold water.
Despite my frustrations with the place, it had also been my saviour. I knew I was letting go of a part of me I would never see again – a young woman who didn’t need anyone but herself. I could see her dissolving away. She had to die. People needed people. I needed my parents to save me from economic ruin upon my return to Australia.
As I walked past the hotel’s reception, a young Indian man winked at me from behind the pages of The Hindustan Times. I flicked through some books near the counter. He continued to wink at me sleazily. I shot him an evil stare. Nothing seemed to stop him. His grin merely widened with my scowl.
The receptionist was trying to separate himself from the three young hustlers nearby, who were betting on their carrom game and swearing in Hindi. At least they were leaving me alone. With their greased-back hair, mismatched suits and shiny leather belts, they looked like some Indian version of the mafia. What they didn’t know was that I understood what they were saying.
“Ah, Madame,” he cooed. “You want hot water tomorrow morning?”
“Hot water? This place is hot enough,” I answered back quickly.
“Yes, yes,” he said, considering my words, grasping for another plan of attack. “What about television, you want television in your room?” he asked, putting on the hard sell.
“No, nothing, I am fine,” I said firmly. “I came here to get away from television,” I added.
“Ah, well,” he answered back with a wide smile. “I try to make you happy, me not make you happy, I try no more.”
I crawled up the mosque’s staircase, desperate to get away from any human interaction, and to drift into sweet sleep. I checked that no one was watching through the narrow window slats of my room, undressed down to my underwear, before wetting myself down with water from a bucket. I pressed my body against the slate walls, lapping up the cool, sighing with relief. I quietly watched the Muslim men pray through my tiny windows, trying to capture images in my mind so I would never forget them. Finally, a dampened cloth thrown over my forehead was the best way to slip out of consciousness.
My dreams came and went, most of them mundane, but one was unforgettable – a parting gift from India. I dreamt I communicated with an eagle – a national symbol on the subcontinent – no surprise one of them had crept into my dreams. The eagle was the size of a human, with dusty pink feathers tucked into his full spread of wings. We stood eyeing one another. The image of this towering bird was framed by a sunset backdrop, with pink tones splashed across the sky.
My dream was splintered by a loud knock and a series of shouts. I smelt crumbling granite walls and disorder around me as I sighed deeply, reluctantly rolling out of bed. I craved peace. India was determined to deprive me of it. I felt the country had a bone to pick with me. Bleary-eyed, I threw on a skirt and a loose fitting, long sleeved shirt. I wrapped a shawl around my arms, ensuring no amount of skin was left exposed. I opened the door slowly, reluctant to find out what awaited me.
“Madame, you must go. Now!” my once calm hotel receptionist shouted loudly into my face. “They are knocking down the mosque,” he shouted, like a drill sergeant.
“What do you mean?” I sputtered, unable to grasp the concept.
“You must go,” he said impatiently. “Hear that noise?” he said, referring to a steady, loud blast that seemed alarmingly close. “They are knocking down the mosque,” he repeated.
“But why?” I asked, still unwilling to believe what was happening.
“They are knocking down the mosque,” he repeated again, growing more impatient.
“But, I don’t understand…” I trailed off. “I am sleeping here. I paid for this room for tonight.”
He laughed and nodded his head from side to side in frustration. “Come here, Madame, over here,” he said, indicating the room across the open-air courtyard through my narrow windows. Its walls had been smashed down, save one. Two construction workers were busy knocking the foundations of the remaining wall and were poised, pick in hands, to start working on a wall near my room.
The scene just didn’t add up. The hotel manager looked at me, put his hands up in the air, and walked to the next room to tell the other guests the bad news. I began picking up my possessions, squeezing them into my ever shrinking backpack. I hoped someone from this bizarre motel mosque would tell me that I could relax, that I didn’t have to go back down onto the streets of Paharganj and hustle for a room. No such luck. Hotel Namaskar’s charm was quickly fading. Things were looking terrible.
All guests scrambled down the mosque’s winding staircase to escape its crumbling structure. Downstairs it was bedlam. There were about ten policemen peering over the shoulders of the dubious hotel owners, who were running about after their every whim. They handed back the money they owed us, laughed as they said, “Madame, this is India.”
I wasn’t comforted. It seemed rather obnoxious, even though I knew this was fairly typical of the subcontinent. The journalist in me wanted answers – clear, logical explanations. Of course, no one provided this logic.
The teenage cook, who had earlier been the servant of the hotel management, was now serving the police officers with a selection of curries and Kingfisher beer. They were lapping up the illegal liquor, possessing the same thirst as the mangy dogs outside on the streets licking up water from puddles. A bribe, no less.
I lunged at a couple of the shifty-looking characters who had looked after me just a day before to find some explanation.
“What’s happening? Why so sudden?” I asked, enunciating each word carefully, eager for answers.
They looked at me, smiled, which only angered me further, turning their smile into laughter. A mad young Western woman appeared to be a great source of laughter for Indian men. That was me, on my last day in Delhi, clambering through a shower of rocks as I left the front door of the strange motel mosque to find somewhere to sleep before I headed back to Australia. Another parting gift from the subcontinent.
Out the front of the hotel was a section cordoned off, as a shower of rocks from above fell. A crowd had gathered as if to watch someone famous. I wondered where the red carpet was. We found ourselves easy meat on the streets for a group of hotel scouts lunging, eager for our business.
I quickly exited down one of the many twisting lanes to sit, drink chai and reassess the situation. I needed to think, but I knew I had to surrender that thought. I’d have plenty of time for that when I was back eating home cooked meals and driving on tree-lined, empty roads. So much space it would make me feel uneasy.
A Hindu local stall holder informed me that the mosque had been knocked down because it was too old and dangerous. A Muslim stall holder told me that they were knocking down the mosque because the government and police favoured Hindu buildings. A woman told me that only the motel parts of the building were being knocked down because it had been operating illegally as a commercial venture. I didn’t know who to believe.
While I drank my tea, I noticed someone approaching me from the left, a mass of twisted limbs and deformities. I considered ignoring the oncomer. It seemed like the easy thing to do. But something made me turn. Guilt perhaps? This contorted human being looked up at me and gave me one of the warmest, most disarming smiles I had ever seen. I returned it instantly.
The moment dissolved my tense mood. India ceased to weigh me down. He wanted money. It didn’t matter. With a smile like that, he deserved every last rupee in my money belt. I needed to chill out.
