Manna From Heaven

Dear GVK, thank you for your kind e-mail in response to my latest blog saying that it was an absorbing read. You mention somewhere that I am diffident about my writing; this is natural for me because when one becomes a writer through choice or through an unbearable compulsion, one is aware that one is in a land of the giants: there is great timeless journalism and great prose out there and one feels diffident about oneself in comparison. The enduring image I have of myself is of a child trying to jump higher and higher with his arm pointing up in a vain attempt to touch the sky. I wish I was a natural and gifted writer like you, writing simply and illuminatingly. I have no natural compulsion to write and I am not gifted.

You asked me why Subhash’s diplomat friend in Teheran was so unhelpful. One of our kind blog reader says even more pointedly, “once again Mr. Kini leaves the reader hanging at the end, waiting for the story to continue again. His article also shows that some of our own people abroad were not helpful at all (a disease that most Indians abroad have even now) and foreign friends such as the university students and an Iranian mother who kept them fed well.”

This is an insight in to the incredible and the unexpected in human nature. If there was one thing that we learnt during our 40 days on the road to Paris, it was that total strangers could be unbelievably kind and hospitable. whereas people you considered to be your friends and well wishers could turn hard hearted, unkind and inhospitable. You will agree that selfishness and an aversion to taking risks is deep rooted in most of us.

I left you last week with a portentous teaser about the wrath of mount Ararat. I now resume my story.

We disembarked on the border between Iran and Turkey and crossed over without the customary interrogation and threats to turn us back. Turkey had had several military coups in the recent past and Adnan Menderes the prime minister, and the president of the country had both been hanged by the military who were the power behind the new government. It was a sunny afternoon and we stretched and stood around kicking our heels in the dry dust of this Turkish border town in an arid desertscape. We were also hungry not having eaten all day during our journey from Teheran to the border with Turkey. Subhash remembered that we had a large piece of bread in his shoulder bag and fished it out triumphantly. “Kini, Khana, Pina” he said without irony. We were however in for a disappointment: the bread had turned hard as stone. After a bit of unsuccessful struggle to break a piece, Subhash put it back in his bag. We would not jettison it.

We were in a non descript border town and there would not be a university where we could waylay unsuspecting students into playing hosts to us. A cold biting wind smelling of rain kicked up whirls of choking dust. We needed a plan of action to get further transport to Erzurum, the next interim town on the map. Our Iranian friends had thought out a plan for us. They had provided us with a small placard made up of card board with words written in Turkish introducing ourselves as two journalists on their way to Europe by road from India in need of free transport, hostelry and nourishment. We were meant to show this to anyone likely to be of help. Having failed to rouse a response from the locals who gave us a wide berth, we decided to walk in to the lion’s den: what better than the local police constabulary? We had instant response and help. An inspector accompanied us to the local bus station, and with commanding gestures asked the driver of a bus headed to Erzurum to take us on board for free. The magic had worked, we were safely on board with our luggage, still nursing our hunger. We were apprehensive, having recalled the hostility of fellow passengers on our bus journey from Zahedan to Teheran. It was dusk and storm clouds were gathering in visible but distant mountain passes surrounded by unnamed mountains. A fellow passenger pointed out to a black monolithic presence in the distance and said respectfully, “ Ararat mountain, famous mountain, dangerous mountain... people go and people don’t come back.” Subhash and I looked at each other in total disbelief. Here was where some say Noah’s ark and his improbable cargo of every single species of life on earth had landed at the end of the Great Flood. We recalled that the old Testament plays out the incredible if implausible story of Noah and his Ark.

It is not really difficult to imagine the Ark on the flooded horizon wending its way through a biblical landscape with spires of forests showing above water, having collected all living species for Noah's great genetic bank. I remember thinking that mountains in the distance always look silent even when torrents of water charge down valleys and passes, in a pyrotechnic of thunder and sheet lightning. Soon we were submerged in the rain as the bus chugged its way up and through the valley in to mountain passes. The road seemed just wide enough for a bus and we could not imagine how two buses travelling in opposite directions in an ink dark night would negotiate past each other without one of them plunging helplessly in to the abyss.

Whilst I was immersed in these speculations and partly remembering the ecstatic orchestral strains of Benjamin Britten's Opera, Noye’s Fludde which I had heard in New Delhi, at an event hosted by the British Council , a restless group of passengers had been lobbying the driver to disembark us since we had not paid for our journey. The bus was now making a perilous passage through its winding mountain geometry. The driver pulled up the bus at a tilt to the mountain wall and proceed to the luggage rack. There he deftly extracted our dirty and damaged suitcases and slung them out of the bus with no approach made to us to see if we would be willing to pay up. Subhash made helpless signs that some money might be forthcoming but in vain. Minutes later we were unceremoniously pushed off the bus virtually clinging to lumps of wet earth which stuck on the wall of the mountain and turned to liquid mud as we tried to get a purchase on some solid object to steady ourselves. I had never before experienced the true darkness of any earthly place, where even a lone star might light up the land. I started to cry hot tears of anger and fear. I was so profoundly grateful that I had not travelled alone and there was the stolid comfort of Subhash’s presence. Ever an optimist Subhash had an idea. He took out the rock solid piece of bread from his knapsack with his mud stained hands and held it to the pouring rain long enough for it to soften. .

This was indeed Manna from Heaven! With the grateful comfort of the piece of bread in our stomachs, we surveyed the scene. It was truly cosmic. We could see Mount Ararat’s silent profile with lightning drawing and re drawing its contours in the velvet black darkness. Then we noticed something else which belonged to the world of science fiction. There were red flashing lights scanning the skies and the land in a fan shaped movement. It occurred to both of us simultaneously that we were looking at American radars perched on the peak of Mount Ararat like a beacon enshrining Noah’s success in preserving the genome bank of life on earth. We gasped in shock and awe.

Hours later a large cattle transporter lorry came up the pass and we stood in its path like rabbits dazed in the headlights, signalling the driver to stop. He turned out to be a long distance truckie with an unexpected cargo of horses in his charge. This gentle giant of a driver gestured that he could take us up to Erzurum if we were prepared to share the space with these lithe horses in the back of the transporter. We agreed with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I still recall this unique experience of sharing a confined space with pungently odorous beasts who kept up neighing and letting out wind and shuffling noisily on their metalled hooves. The horses were badly distressed by the thunder and lightning outside and soon it was clear that several of them had got loose from their restraints of ropes and some were opportunistically attempting to mate. It dawned on us that as a mini stampede began to unravel, it was just a matter of time when all the horses would be free of their restraints and we stood little chance of saving ourselves from being trampled by these magnificent beasts in a collective frenzy. Although a fashionably vocal agnostic, I began to pray for a miracle. We called out and screamed for the driver’s attention in vain. Even without the cataclysmic thunderstorm, he could not have heard us.

The lorry seemed to come to a stop. The driver jumped out of the cab and came round and opened the tarpaulin wind cover to enquire how we were faring. I think he quickly realised that we had been minutes away from serious injury if not death. He had not stopped for us. In the midst of nowhere in this mountain pass was an all hours tea shop in a trailer with a few long distance trucks parked precariously side to side, nose to tail, and their drivers drinking tea. Our driver retied the now calmed horses one by one and offered to take us in his cramped driver’s cab and to our great cheer offered to buy us some tea. The rest of our journey to Erzurum was uneventful.

My memory of Erzurum is faint, except for the large dusty square we found ourselves in, with a large impressive mosque at one end where we took shelter. I remember thinking as we crossed the square dragging our luggage that we might have looked like a couple of pin headed matchstick men figures in a L.S.Lowry painting of a square in Manchester with a couple of suitcases at our heels.

Our next stop was Ankara, capital of Turkey where we were to receive the most abundant and totally unexpected hospitality from a near stranger with great conversation and wonderful food in the company of some of the free thinking intellectuals, economists, bohemian writers and artists of Turkey.

We were truly Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, always unaware of the danger, a gift of youth.

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G.V.Krishnan, my gifted friend and his blogsite

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Blog Magic: How Irfan Reconnected With Kini

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B2B with K : Of crossover book and a cross-country trip

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B2B with K: My take on the names you dropped...

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B2B with K: Clueless in Germany, a tale of two visits

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Facing No man’s Land: End of the Journey?


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B2B with K: Where we were the day Nehru died


The Wrath of Mount Ararat