Revisiting India’s compelling lure

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After spending time at a deluxe hotel, Sun-Times reporter Rummana Hussain headed to Bihar to visit relatives and experience the India of most ordinary citizens.

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Updated: February 16, 2012 8:15AM

NEW DELHI, 1988 — My younger siblings lean against the streaked glass, hungrily looking down at the expanse of water that teases and tempts like a Bedouin’s heat-induced delirium.

No longer able to resist the aquatic siren call, they speed off on the worn-out carpet, dizzily plotting to substitute their cotton underwear for swimming suits until they stumble upon our frowning dad.

“Do not go in there!” my father bellows, convinced that the murky pool at our “high-end” hotel in India’s capital drew more algae and insects than two-legged guests. “You’ll catch a disease.”

And with that ominous declaration, my brother and baby sister are relegated to diving in front of the television where my older sister and I had been watching fictional water-based diversions kiboshed by a more carnivorous killjoy in “Jaws III.”

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Today — more than 20 years later — visitors continue to label that overseas hotel as a “nightmare,” “dingy” and “shabbily maintained.” If online reviews are to be believed, a recent lodger caught a bacterial infection after a brief six-hour stay while another surmised more comfort could be found on a “park bench.”

Many parts of the “Hindustan” I visited in my youth remain Third World decrepit, but the stark transformations and relative prosperity overwhelm as much as the indescribable stench that would rudely greet travelers landing at Indira Gandhi Airport just a few years ago.

The palpable odor has since been replaced by fragrant Body Shop creams and the greasy comfort of McDonald’s French fries — the perfume of my inner 12-year-old who bitterly remembers the British-based “Wimpy” as the only form of fast-food relief in the then Soviet Union-allied India.

Sad, emaciated dogs no longer limp along side the luggage carousels, and the sea of vagrants lying outside the terminals has curiously vanished, leaving me to wonder where the impoverished were discarded for the airport renovations.

Architectural wonders like the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort — where an inscription exclaims, “If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here” — are permanent reminders that the extremely wealthy have always been a presence in India, albeit cocooned from the frenetic crowds, filth and starvation.

The mustachioed Mughals have now been replaced by jet-setting tycoons, and as the burgeoning economy surges ahead, the appetite for luxury grows amongst the larger Indian population evidenced by grandeur of the Leela Kempinski hotels and resorts.

When I walked into the company’s latest property in New Delhi and glimpsed the grand sandstone elephants and gleaming white BMWs posted at the entryway, I could no longer presume that “five-star” offerings in the motherland are always synonymous with underwhelming and mediocre.

Sparkling Murano glass chandeliers, lively paintings, and decorative ceiling art resembling the thin layers of silver that gently garnish my mother’s homemade desserts embellish every corner where staffers passing by pressed their palms together for a welcoming “namaste.”

Roughly $25,000 a month is spent on the fresh flowers adorning the hotel, and in the Library Bar sits a sleek bottle of the decadent Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac that dares opulent barflies to drop $4,000 for a mere shot. Among the takers so far: a Zulu royal and his half-dozen size entourage.

The pool was still under renovation, but I’m sure once completed, it would win my late father’s approval.

He may have been a little weary, though, of dipping his feet in the manmade, single alligator infested Lake Pichola that my companions and I were ferried across for a soft shower of rose petals at the Leela Palace in the Rajasthani city of Udaipur.

The “Venice of the East,” which was featured in the James Bond film “Octopussy,” is a majestic smorgasbord for modern-day maharajas and maharanis where towering hotels rivaling the nearby City Palace sprout along the water. We were ushered inside the Leela Palace Udaipur by parasol-holding attendants and passionate Qawwali singers. After the sun went down, fireworks from the Hindu Diwali festival illuminated the lake and courtyard gardens.

The next day, I donned an oversized white kurta for a yoga lesson from a blond Spaniard and received an invigorating facial from a young Bhutanese woman who was visibly excited over her assignment to wash the King of Bhutan’s feet during his honeymoon stay that weekend.

My fellow travelers, however, yearned for the ordinary. None of them had been to India before, and they were eager to see the noisy, dusty unpredictable clamor that lay outside our heavenly sanctuaries.

In my jet-lagged haze, I had forgotten to remind them to use the hotel facilities before our first excursion into bustling Old Delhi.

“I should have warned you,” I sheepishly said as my slightly petrified friends emerged from an unsanitary public washroom.

Hopefully my omission of the perils of communal squat toilets was forgiven when my rusty Urdu came in handy haggling for Kashmiri scarves at the open-air Dilli Haat bazaar where Lady Gaga caressed jewel-toned pashminas days later.

There was an undeniable charm experiencing India’s rough beauty through the eyes of those who had never sat on a wayward rickshaw, seen a family of five comfortably riding on a motorcycle or had henna painted across their hands by an artist who explained that the darker the resulting the stain left on a woman’s palm, the more she would be loved by her husband.

“We’re celebrities,” the others exclaimed as locals proudly took pictures with the “goras” or white people they rarely came across.

Similarly, my friends clicked away at the throngs of bangle and sari-clad women, heterosexual men holding hands and wandering cows — all anomalies in the west but excruciatingly mundane sights in the world’s largest democracy.

The stares continued when we strolled into Jama Masjid, India’s oldest mosque commissioned by the 17th century Emperor Shah Jahan.

I was dressed modestly enough, I was told. Still, in the spirit of camaraderie, I threw on a garish “Mrs. Roper”-approved muumuu that the skirt-wearing women in our group were asked to wear when we entered the expansive courtyard where pigeons hovered around the domes and minarets.

I marveled over Shah Jahan’s other unforgettable jewel three times before so I skipped the Taj Mahal to see some ... toilets.

On the surface, the Sulabh International Toilet Museum, is a kitschy guide on the gadgets we have used since 2500 B.C. to do our business.

I couldn’t keep a straight face looking at the displays of toilets that resembled the latrines in my relatives’ homes or the plush “Pee & Poo” toys our somber, betel leaf-chewing guide stood by.

But I stopped giggling when I learned the museum was built to highlight the lack of toilets for the masses and to eradicate the concept and ill treatment of India’s “untouchable” caste.

Those of us who chose Delhi over Agra, also took a jaunt to the Qutub Minar, the Islamic victory tower that doubles as India’s highest minaret. Unfortunately, tourists can no longer climb inside because too many depressed people were jumping to their deaths 240 feet below.

I was feeling as dejected as a post-midnight Cinderella myself when I left Gurgaon’s Leela Palace in a broken down taxi while my friends continued the exotic ball on a cushy Qatar Airways flight.

When I emerged wearing a simple cotton shalwar kameez for a trip to my parents’ native Bihar, the manager at the Sai Villa bed and breakfast joked that no one would ever mistake me for an English speaker.

That night, in my father’s ancestral village, I opened the bathroom door and shrieked when I saw a translucent gecko fall at my feet.

My bath, which just a week ago consisted of a rain shower and tub overlooking a plasma TV, was now a bucket and jug and my king-size bed gave way to a more modest model fitted with a mosquito net.

Outside, the next morning neighbors lined cow dung across their mud floors, and Muslim villagers, including my relatives, fed the goats they were going to sacrifice for the upcoming Eid-ul-Adha.

I passed out Leela Palace toiletries I collected to the children who snaked behind me everywhere I went as if I were the Pied Piper.

But I kept a roll of toilet paper I snagged from the hotel to myself.

I was miles away from the infinity pools, rich dal makhani and butlers but I was back in the part of India where my roots are firmly anchored, the part of India that makes me cry when I leave as I’m reminded of my father’s memory and his stern warnings to us before each trip to not act like brats.

My attachment to India shall remain deep, but I refuse to airbrush the country’s blemishes or glorify it as a peaceful alcove for soul-searching Nirvana seekers.

The gut-wrenching poverty haunts me, the class conscientiousness is stifling, and I have had too many run-ins with dysentery and opportunist cousins to deem it paradise.

But to paraphrase the Sufi poet, if there’s a place that will continually draw me to its rapidly changing landscape, ancient traditions and messy splendor “it is here, it is here.’’