Dharbhanga Station
Unless we rode the Indian rail, it was a long walk to get anywhere from our part of Nepal, if headquarters were not paying for a flight. This meant passing through Dharbhanga Junction. Though the town of Dharbhanga was going to take a long time to be written up by Rick Steves, coincidence had placed it on the spot where all rail lines converged. Just as modern Romans walked between massive, dignified remnants of former glory, so farm families on their way to visit kin would sleep on solidly built and commodious platforms and glance in awe at first and second class waiting rooms, the insides of which they would never expect to see. They said he who was tired of Dharbhanga was tired of travel.
Probably westerners are rupee-a-dozen now and a jaded public ignores them entirely in favor of television. But when our salad was greener, among beggar-boys and rickshah wallas, pilgriming sadhus and line-switch men in khaki shorts, we were a big draw wherever we went. Really, we were very foolish not to have engaged an agent. We did not have to perform beyond our normal routine to fascinate an audience. Simply drinking iodine-water from a bottle, wearing a ready-made shirt or being in possession of a sleeping bag with eight-foot zipper was enough to excite comment. But just because the several of us in wait for a train were accustomed to being the center of attention, did not mean that we enjoyed it. To escape from the gathering crowd, we all went into the second class waiting room, adjacent to the platform. Except for Frank.
Heinze was a stitch. You had to know that to understand him at all and you could be a long time finding it out, as he was at pains to hide any outward expression of humor. He could easily have been taken for an earnest and straight forward representative of middling America. Even he sometimes fell into that error.
Placing his jholla at his feet, Heinze felt about his pockets until he found a smoke, a bidi. The little boys passed this information around in a ragged half-circle. "Salai? You got a match?" he demanded of the smallest boy in deharti, the Sakhawa dialect. He speaks language, country-talk, went around the group and the size of his audience grew. "Yeah, of course I speak language," he said. "You do, don’t you? And I’ve been to school. Have you been to school?" Heads shook no. "So, why wouldn’t I be able to talk? Who’s got fire?" He looked around and settled back on the littlest boy. "You smoke bidi?" The boy looked embarrassed, but leaned his head sideways in assent. "So how come you don’t have salai, then, huh?" The boy shrugged and grinned. Word went around the group and matches were produced with some pride. Heinze gave the kid with the matches a little cone-shaped smoke.
"Hat!" he cried, just as the boy lit his own bidi from the same match. "You can’t smoke that–you’re a Hindu. It’s juto now that I’ve used the same flame to light my bidi." The boy looked at the glowing end of his now ritually unclean bidi, obviously wondering if it contained the often-heard-of-never-seen beef. "You are a Hindu, aren’t you?" Heinze demanded. All the other boys and rickshah wallas stared at the boy with the smoke, suddenly wondering if, though he had scarcely enough clothes on to keep anything secret at all, he might have been a covert Mussulman or even a Christian all the years of his life. But Hindu, he was Hindu.
"Are you all Hindu, then?" Heinze asked. Heads wobbled sideways in assent. Hindu, Hindu, all, all. "Well, I’m a Christian," Heinze asserted. "I believe in one God. What god do you believe in," he demanded of the kid puffing on the polluted bidi. It was a poser. No one had studied for the test. "What about Ram?" he asked. Ramchandra, yes, very much so. Ramchandra was certainly god. "Well, how do you pray to Ram?" he demanded. A boy pressed his hands together and brought them to his forehead and up, grinning. "We sing," Heinze said. This was received with startlement.
"Don’t you know how to sing to your God?" he asked. Of course, they knew how to sing–to the gods, falsetto filmi music, gutteral ghazal, anything. Singing was free entertainment, very popular. "Then do you know this American song?" he asked, breaking into the descending, then rising chant of Duke, Duke, Duke,Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke...
Ram, Ram, Ram, Sita, Ram, Ram, Ram,
Sita, Ram, Ram, Ram, Sita, Ram, Ram, Siiita!
As the melody’s loop circled back on itself he waved for the crowd to join in, which they did–a little raggedly at first, but finally with enthusiasm. He led the group around the circular chant for a few rotations. "Stop!" he cut them off with a wave of his bidi. "You," he pointed to the left side of the choir, where the rickshah wallas were massed, "sing this." But instead of the Beach Boys’ Bar bar bar bar Barbar Ann/Oh Barbara Ann take my hand, Heinze set them going with–
Ragupathi raja, Sita Ram, jai, jai Sita bhi raja Ram
Jai, jai Sita bhi raja Ram, jai, jai, raja ragu Ram.
Once they got going together the two-sided chorus put its heart into the round. Porters and track maintenance hurried over to one side or the other of the cannon. It was the first cannon that had been set off in Dharbhanga since the Sepoy Rebellion and they were not going to miss out. The tin vault of the platform roof magnified their praise back in a way that made it possible to feel the benign attention of God. Raising a hand, he brought one side, then the other out into prominence that sounded like a sort of glory.
Falsetto singing was very common, even movie starlets practiced a version that could etch glass. As the round rose and fell in harmony, a sudden counter-tenor soared above, singing sweetly Marcie Blane’s doo-wop hit, I Wanna Be Bobby’s Girl, only–
I wanna be VISH-nu’s boy
I wanna be (choke!)SHI-va’s boy
Ram, Ram, Ram...
Ragupathi raja, Sita Ram...
In the end, it cost him the rest of his bidis stop them, before anyone realized what a riot he’d caused.