ON FINAL APPROACH TO BABYLON

“When I had seen Madurai I felt that I had at last seen a temple of Babylon in all its glory”
(Wilfred Scawen Blunt).

"It is raining these few days and that is because it is mango season. That is the reason we are
having raining”. Joseph Fernandez, who had picked me up at the airport in Bangalore, was
explaining the truth of these unseasonal, pro-monsoon rains.

But Bangalore always it looked green. Flying down from Hyderabad, the landscape seemed as
on a school map, the greys and browns of the scorched, goat - devoured plains of Andhra
Pradesh giving way to the tidy green world, almost European with its farms and copses and
villages, that surrounds Bangalore.

The flight, two hours normally, had taken nearly a day. Indian Airlines engineers were having
what the press referred to as a "stir" and were releasing planes when it suited them. We had
sat aboard our Airbus from 6 am until eleven, the ground temperature in the low forties, whilst
the crew fed us breakfast and morning tea and the engineers laid out the contents of one of
the engines on the blistering tarmac. My seat companion, a radiation engineer, alternately
hummed and gave me a commentary on what they were doing to the engine. When someone
appeared with a big chart, like architects’ drawings, to assist in its re- assembly he stopped
humming and said simply, “Good heavens!”

From Bangalore I took like Lal Bagh Express through the rocky wastelands of the Eastern ghats
down to steaming Madras. In India you cannot escape the engineers. The one I met this time
was a civil engineer who claims to have invented a revolutionary aircraft navigation and
landing system and a means of extending runways without the need for macadam. He
presented me with a minutely hand- written treatise which begins ....

"In view of the contents of my statement of specialisations and detached biodata enclosed,
and in virtue of my qualifications, interests, abilities, achievements research aptitudes and
talents, I am pleased to submit this application of the expression of intent and formal request
for favour of your kind consideration of granting me the following facilities .... ..

and concludes sixty pages later ....

“… with my faster understanding of any subject of study through cybernetic applications and
my philosophical, mathematical, analytical, innovative, creative and research bend of mind,
this work, (which should amounting to 500 typed pages) when released will immediately
attract international attention and esteem".

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When I finished leafing through this proposal and before I could speak, he asked, "Have you
any questions for me?"

He then declared that I should offer him a job. Responding that I owned no runways to
lengthen, I promised to deliver the proposal to the relevant authorities in Australia. Later, when
I was reading the Geoffrey Moorhouse book, OM, the engineer, Dr Gurjar, interrupted me
repeatedly.

"That is a book about our culture", he announced.

"Partly", I replied, scarcely looking up

"If you want to examine our culture", he went on, "you should be reading Continent of Circe,
by Nirad Chaudhuri. That is about our culture. Then you will see why we are an exhausted
people".

"I've read it", I replied, "twenty years ago".

"Then you must be a very tired man, for we are a worn-out, wearisome people. Mr Chaudhuri is
writing 'the Indian people want to live without putting in anything beyond the minimum
amount of exertion, bodily or mental, without any continuous demand on their will power'. This
he is writing .

Dr Gurjar had mentioned that he was travelling on a concessional ticket and I wondered to
which of the many concessional categories, detailed in the Indian Railways Timetable
(Abstract), he belonged:

 Blind Persons with or without Escort

 TB Patients and attendant
 Cancer Patients (or both)
 Non infection leprosy patients
 Mentally retarded person with Escort (both)
 Widows of policemen killed by Terrorists
 Windows (sic) of IPKF personnel killed in action in Sri Lanka
 Deaf and Dumb
 Bonafide professional Entertaining Parties for journey of more than 300 kms
 Industrial labourers in Parties of not less than 20 sponsored by Labour department to visit
River Valley projects
 All games and athletic Sportsmen

"None of these", he said dismissively. "Research scholar on project of world importance. That is
my category".

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The recent retirement of Allan Border as Australian cricket captain was a great topic of
conversation in India. A year before I had been mobbed by school-children on excursion in
Mahabalipuram when I foolishly owned up to being Australian. In the absence of Allan Border,
my autograph was in demand. Now the billboards of Madras addressed the occasion:
"Congratulations A.B. Retired but Not Out. You too can be ‘Not Out’ in you Digjam Suiting”.

On my first visit to Madras I had fallen into the sewer. Later an optometrist had managed to
melt my sunglasses. Another time I had met a man in the grounds of the vast colonial High
Court who had chased me to show me the ashes of his wife in a paper bag. These, he claimed,
had been conjured up by Sai Baba from a photograph. This visit was exceptional in that
nothing strange happened. I had planned to fly from Madras to the great pilgrim city of
Madurai, but again the airlines disrupted my schedule.

Whilst waiting at the airport for the midday flight I met a woman who had flown in from New
York, where she lives, and was going to a small town near Madurai for her sister's wedding.
Despite having flown for so long that she did not know what day or time it was, and not having
eaten since leaving summer in New York (caste worries and a newly achieved American
suspicion of "unhygienic foreign foods") she was a quite striking beauty in a Mysore sari of
green and gold silk and serenely unperturbed by all these delays.

"We might retire to Australia", she remarked. "Everyone seems to do that these days".

When we boarded our flight at 5pm there were rumours amongst passengers that it might by-
pass Tiruchirapalli, the half way stopover. Boarding an aircraft on the sub-continent is a slow
business as you have to identify your checked-in baggage before it is loaded onto the plane.
This produces what I once called "The Great Luggage Riot".

No matter how often they have supervised this activity, the staff manage to be bamboozled
and belittled by high class people who shout and point vaguely in the direction of their bags
and to themselves confuse low class people ("menials" and "subordinates") who stand about,
quaking, not knowing what they are supposed to do. Inevitably, when the boarding is
complete, there are half a dozen battered suitcases still strewn beneath the wings, and
invariably these are thrown into the cargo hold - so defeating the purpose of the exercise.

In the air, our 737 is immediately engulfed in soaring ziggurats of dry cloud, a sign that the
monsoon, due in a few weeks on the west coast, was on course. Just prior to our surprise
descent into Trichy - the great Rock Fort in full view - our pilot announced both good news and
bad.

"First the bad. We cannot proceed to Madurai as we have no night landing facilities." (I
assumed that he meant Madurai had no such facilities, as it was now night and the plane was

ON FINAL APPROACH TO BABYLON - BY MURRAY LAURENCE PAGE 3

apparently on final approach to Trichy). "Now the good. Fleets of taxis will take passengers
on to Madurai".

On the ground there was not only another Luggage Riot but also the Great Taxi Riot.
Passengers rushed and badgered for the first Ambassador arriving in a long slow train of such
vehicles, ignoring the clipboard carrying Indian Airlines officials who were supposed to organise
the cavalcade.

When they had restored order, one of the men called out for "saints, holy men and hermits" to
come forward. Madurai was a pilgrim city and our plane had been carrying a number of orange
clad old men carrying few possessions and sticks. ("Tsk, tsk. In the old days, hermits would
have walked to Madurai", a businessmen near me grumbled).

The saints came forward and ten of them were pushed into the first two cars.

Mortals such as myself were then gathered and assigned to cars in groups of four, perhaps
because we were portlier than the saints and holy men.

I was asked to take the privileged seat, beside the driver. I was not pleased about this -
knowing how awful Indian roads are after dark and when we stopped for the first of what
seemed like a dozen unnecessary stops for food, I offered the seat to an older man who had
been sitting in the back complaining about the effect of the car's springs on his ribs and,
perhaps unexpectedly, his ears. He thanked me warmly for my spontaneous generosity.

Iddlies, puries, tikkis and tiffins .... we stopped for them often as the night wore on. The
Ambassador is a sturdy rotund vehicle - a 1954 Morris Oxford in which you feel as if you are in
a hot, vibrating cave and whose little engine - unchanged in design since those days - chugs
bravely forward, despite the reluctance of Indian drivers, sitting hunched right over their
steering wheels, to change gears down. There would be some protection in the event of an
accident - those "headlong" ones that litter the highways - but with drivers proceeding with
either no lights or on high beam and with lorries and buses careering wildly and without fear of
anything, you cannot be confident of arriving at all.

My companions began the journey speaking to one another in English. One was a tax-collector,
another a food inspector (such a vast field of activity in India, I thought) and the third, of
course, was an engineer. After a while they discovered that they could all speak Tamil and so
the conversation proceeded happily in that language until they decided that they wanted to
include me again.

Much of the talk was taken up with whether it would take four or six hours to reach Madurai
and whether it was 300, 400 or 600 kilometres. This was odd, I thought, as the road signs
clearly started at 220 kilometres and went downwards from there.

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The engineer, as you would expect, had a project and he was reminded of it when our driver
kept having to pull off to the side (trying not to squash any children or hit any bullocks) to
avoid those rampaging buses. He cheerily announced to all that twenty five years ago he had
developed a system to assist cars passing in the night. "When car A, approaching say from
north, comes abeam car B, approaching in this instance from south", he explained, "its
headlights would extinguish on dot of passing and a row of lights along driver side of car, that
being right side in India, would illuminate, to light path for car B as it passed abeam car A.
Similarly, car B's headlights would extinguish on dot of passing and same row of lights, on right
side, that is driver side, would light up to illuminate passage of car A, the car which I described
to you just previously as approaching from north". He detailed this plan, giving us some
embellishing hand movements, and then said conclusively, "This I have invented".

And waited for someone to comment.

No one could think of anything to say at first, until the tax collector asked what had become of
this proposal, these past 25 years. He couldn't help noticing, he added, perhaps unkindly, that
the system was not in general usage.

"I am writing to all and sundry", the inventor replied, "explaining its merits. I am making
lights-on, lights-off models and inviting inspections. Even Chief Minister and Ministers of State,
oppositionists and newspaper editors are hearing my plan".

"And?" the tax collector asked, a gloating tone to his question.

"Not one is responding", the engineer replied sadly. "Not one is wishing to examine its merits".

"That is a pity", concluded the tax collector, without feeling.

"The pity", I said, "is that drivers don't use the lights that they already have properly. That
would be, well almost as useful as your plan".

"The poltroons!" the engineer suddenly said, savagely but beneath his breath, and ignoring my
suggestion.

Four hours later we reached Madurai and were deposited at the Indian Airlines office. The car,
driver and guide who were supposed to have picked me up at the airport - about six hours
earlier - were there and the guide seemed annoyed with me for having wasted half his day and
not arriving by air. "We are waiting and waiting at airport", Mr Prince admonished, picking his
nose, "and now you are arriving by unlicensed taxi. This is not stated in contract". The fact that
they would be paid for half a day of idleness seemed to make no difference.

My hotel was an old British bungalow perched on a hill with commanding views of the city.

ON FINAL APPROACH TO BABYLON - BY MURRAY LAURENCE PAGE 5

Just before midnight I had a drink on the terrace and felt the holy, immemorial passions of
Madurai enveloping me in the form of devotional music, those haunting and repetitive, high
pitched songs accompanied by the harmonium, streaming up the hillside from the distant,
sleepless town.

Around the corner, on another terrace, were the sodden remnants of a wedding party. A quite
vociferous argument was in progress, which attracted the attentions of the waiters, peeping
through the potted bougainvillea.

"You are calling me 'fuck'!" one man shouted. "Is meaning scoundrel", another replied.

"Is not meaning scoundrel. Is having greatly worse meaning!" "I am meaning scoundrel".

"You are calling 'fuck'. Is not scoundrel. Please note. N.B. Scoundrel is meaning idiot".

"Then you are scoundrel".

"These words I cannot tolerate ....

I could not see the protagonists and so cannot guess their relationship or what provoked this
exchange. All I can note is that one effect of satellite delivered television has been the arrival
of "greatly worse" words of abuse than have traditionally been used. This is a pity.

Another result has been the inclusion of more suggestive lyrics and immodest dancing and
dress in Indian movies - trying to keep up with MTV. For the past six months the song "Sexy,
sexy, sexy" has been on lips all over the place and on billboards advertising lifestyle
magazines - even after the authorities had the title changed to "Baby, baby, baby".

This is also a pity as one of the eternal delights of India has been that it is just so old-fashioned
- its own cultures vital enough, and the country huge enough to slough off all the global
trendiness that has engulfed the rest of us. The satellites may yet change all of that.

The next morning I went on a tour of Madurai with Mr Prince and his driver. "Do you have a
first name?", I asked Mr Prince. "Yes", he responded improbably, "Albert".

The Meenakshi temple is one of the holiest and largest shrines in India. The saints and holy
men, flying down from Madras, would now be amongst the thousands who swarmed around its
tank, into and out of the sanctuaries and caverns. There were also great numbers of old
people, particularly men, enjoying what in outback Queensland is called a "dinner camp" - a
sleep in the shade. These people, according to Mr Prince, found their houses too small and so
spent most of each day at the temple.

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Newlyweds, each couple surrounded by rabbles of relatives, poured through the temple, going
particularly to the Shiva sanctuary - containing the statue of Shiva's phallus, which I was
unable to see, being thwarted by a notice reading

NO LUNGIS NOT ALLOWED

NO CAMERAS NOT ALLOWED
NON HINDUS NOT ALLOWED

Mr Prince explained that the lungi ban was directed at Muslims who traditionally wore colourful
sarongs (lungis) whilst Hindus wore white ones called dhotis.

In the Hall of a Thousand Pillars ("Count them", challenged Mr Prince, violently picking his
nose, "there are 987") a boy of about twelve kept following me around, hissing and pleading.
Finally, when Mr Prince was out of earshot, he approached stealthily and whispered urgently,
"Sir, sir, please, I have eight sisters. Please take me away with you".

"Well", I replied, "I've got just two but I know how you feel".

However I declined to take him away with me and so he said, "Please, then, give me a pen, a
notebook and any pair of eyeglasses".

Across the road from the main temple - in the shadow of the giant eastern gopuram (gate) is
another temple which contains a bazaar complete with dozens of tailors, umbrella repairers
and sellers of religious artefacts. There was a stall where torches were remade from torch
wreckage and another where serviceable locks were constructed from a scattering of lock-
debris. Moments after I entered, marvelling at the scarlet clothed statues of Kali - the goddess
of destruction, her many arms swinging murderously - a boy appeared with two things which
he presented before me. One was a length of cotton of almost the same stripe as the shirt I
was wearing and the other was a made-up shirt. He implored me to have a shirt made, just like
the one I had on, and in the time that it took me to do a circuit of the temple, stepping around
shoals of beggar children and other tailors' touts, each flapping shirts and cloth at me, the
price had fallen from 200 rupees ($10) to 20 rupees. Even then I didn't buy. Feeling rather a
curmudgeon, I gave some money to a desperately lame man who had been deposited in a
corner in a pile of tormented limbs.

Mr Prince then took me to the roof-top of a nearby building to view the temple, the beautiful
Mariammam Teppakulam tank and the Palace of Thirumalai Nayak. Descending, he managed
to direct me to the shop where a Kashmiri family were half-starving for the lack of trade. When
I entered they were sitting in despondent gloom. A boy switched on the light and then, without
thinking, I said that I would like to look at silk scarves.

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When I had bought a couple and was making for the exit, the Kashmiri owner appeared beside
me, contorting his body and arranging his teeth like a mouse-trap, and announced that he had
another room. Would I please to have a look at it. I consented and was led to the rug room.

"If I buy something in here", I declared, "my wife will say that I met a Kashmiri thief".

"There are no thieves in Kashmir", the owner asserted.

"That's because they are all here in Madurai", I replied, brazenly. "These are satirical remarks",
he observed.

Whilst this was taking place, the staff were unrolling rugs and slapping them on to the floor,
rich silks, gorgeous dark coloured wools, old tribals, a brilliant and mesmerising ambush.

I said that with this stock he must be a very rich man.

"This is all my family's wealth", he replied, "we fled with it from Kashmir".

Pretending not to be interested I sipped the tea I had been offered and watched a regional
cricket game that was running on a television in the corner. But I remained mindful that we
had recently moved and floor coverings were on the shopping list.

"If I wanted to buy rugs", I announced, "I would go to Kashmir, or buy them in Sydney where
they're always on sale".

"Those fellows are Pakistanis. Such men you cannot trust".

Meanwhile he had selected two silk rugs which he had noticed me glancing at more than once,
further tightening his trip wire.

Feigning indifference, I walked out twice, asked about the teams playing and enquired as to
whether what the Sanskrit scholars had written about Kashmir was true: "Learning, lofty
houses, saffron, icy water and grapes: things that even in heaven are difficult to find are
common there".

"We live in India and have not time for heaven or poetry", replied the owner, shaking slightly
as he showed me how the rugs could be folded ever so tightly to make carrying easy. A peon
kept appearing with a book containing receipts for sales to Germans, Americans and other
visitors from the planet beyond. "Coming from hither and yon, they are, to this shop".

"Although not for about four months", I drawled, realising why the Kashmiri was shivering and,
now, perspiring.

ON FINAL APPROACH TO BABYLON - BY MURRAY LAURENCE PAGE 8

But later that night, as I sat ruefully at Madurai station, with the two silk rugs in a cloth bag
that the owner has sewn for me himself I thought that I had indeed met a Kashmiri, complete
with all the artfulness that that word has implied for centuries.

(It was only a few days later at Sydney airport that I began to relax about what I had bought.
The customs officer whistled and shook his head when I told him what I had paid for the rugs.
"You can't've", he said, "they're worth at least twice that".
"I'm a good bargainer", I replied.
"Or you met a very desperate salesman", he remarked cynically.)

At the station a feeling of great desolation descended upon me. Mr Prince, who had not
stopped smirking since we left the Kashmiri's shop, examined my ticket for the Pandayan
Express and noticed that I was on the waiting list. The train, 22 carriages occupying the length
of the platform, was already under siege. At the reserved cars - I thought that I had a
confirmed first class sleeper - more fortunate travellers were checking their names against the
computer generated lists, pasted to the doors.

My thoughts went back to the early years of my encounters with India - those long and
unbearable nights travelling without a reservation in third class carriages on the Frontier Mail
or the express train from hell, the Gorakhpur Express, but Mr Prince had other plans.

He located a rotund, uniformed man, the train's chief conductor, whose clipboard supposedly
held secrets about quotas, cancellations and so on. To this man, already surrounded by a
havoc of people in a similar position to me, we made a lengthy appeal. The conductor took
absolutely no notice and waddled away to another carriage, the mob never leaving him, to
ignore further supplications.

"Follow that fat man!" Mr Prince instructed and he went off in search of a friend who, he
claimed, worked in reservations.

I pursued the fat controller who waded from car to car checking things in his file and behaving
as if the agitated, quarrelling crowd was nothing more than a persistent headwind.

Half an hour later, and ten minutes before the train's departure, Mr Prince materialised
accompanied by an elderly man who was introduced to me as a former Deputy Assistant
Vigilance Officer from Kodaikanal Road, all of which sounded very remote. His head moving in
wobbly half arcs, the officer explained that for about 100 rupees he could ensure that I would
be "entrained with berth in a trice". The fat fellow would be of no account, he added.

I handed over the money and they evaporated, leaving me wondering whether I should have
approached the nearby booth staffed by the Madurai Ladies Circle Number 3, with its
promising sign reading "May I Help you?"

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However, within minutes, Mr Prince was back sweating and squirming in a way that indicated
he had an awkward suggestion to make.

"Please, you are now paying extra one hundred rupees. Facility is very expensive this evening.
Also I am requiring fifty rupees service charge". His deportment was intolerable, but with the
train on the point of an on-time departure and my pressing need to be aboard (I had a plane to
catch from Madras to Colombo the next morning) I handed over another 150 rupees.

Just as the Pandayan Express started to roll, and I was contemplating whether to jump aboard,
the officer and Mr Prince reappeared, picked up my bags and began running along the
platform before leaping into a slowly moving first class car. They led me to a compartment
where there were several free seats, placed my luggage in the rack, thanked me in an
obsequious sort of way and scuttled from the train.

I was "entrained", as promised. And when the plump conductor appeared an hour or so later it
was clear that he had been the individual at the top of the payment chain responsible for
finding the berth for me.

"We are pure veg", the husband sitting opposite me announced when I had settled, "and we
are having our holidays at Ooty".

"I am non-veg", I retorted "and not on holidays at all".

But this chasm in our lifestyles and current business did not stop us engaging in pleasant
conversation for the early part of the trip.

When I explained the difficulties that I had had in securing a berth on the train, the man said
that I should have insisted on "emergency quota" or "foreigners' quota".

"Quota is unavailable", his wife contradicted knowingly, "due to proliferation of saints and car
festivals".

This strange bit of information caused the husband's head to tilt and sway as if he had
suddenly fallen asleep but he righted it sufficiently to ask me if I would like to share their tiffin.

Tiffin was a great quantity of green mangoes sliced up and served with salt and pepper, a
rather mundane meal even if you are pure veg.

Later in the evening, whilst they were preparing themselves for bed, I walked to the open
doorway of the carriage and sat on the step watching the passage of the countryside. A full
moon had just risen over the low serrated hills of the eastern ghats, drenching the dry earth
with silver light. Far off, lightning sparked, splintering the brittle air. I was taken back again to
earlier train journeys, this time remembered fondly, when you could ride in the doorways on

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hot nights, the distinctive rhythm of a train being steam hauled beneath your feet, marvelling
at the illusion of an empty landscape where the only movements were the dim lights of a
distant and lonely truck and the only sound the wail of divine harmonies wandering the night
like errant spirits - a spell broken at the frequent towns where, even in the nebulous abyss of
the earliest dawn, a clamorous host of vehicles, humans and animals would appear, pressed
against the level crossing gates and at the train windows on station platforms.

In the morning, eating a breakfast that I had ordered from the Pantry Car, I ascertained that
the train would be arriving at Madras Egmore about three hours behind schedule.

I said to the couple, "I've seen the sign, 'Trains running late are liable to make up lost time'. Do
you think that will happen in this case?"

"Pandayan Express will not make up lost time", replied the wife, who seemed to know all about
these things, "that alone is what is liable to happen".
First published in The Australian

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