1400 BANANAS, 76 TOWNS & 1 MILLION PEOPLE
A journey along the Indian coast with interludes of history, food and conversation
Samir Nazareth
Leadstart Publishing; 378; Rs 399
1400 Bananas, 76 Towns & 1 Million People is a record of a journey that Samir Nazareth - after resigning his job in a multinational non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in protecting the environment - undertakes from Bhuj in Gujarat, down the west coast of India and up the east coast to Kolkata, and thence to Darjeeling and Nathula, on the border with Tibet. He starts in the first week of March and is back home (in Nagpur) by late September, though, oddly, we are left to guess the year. The manuscript was ready in 2007 and it took Mr Nazareth seven years to find a publisher; the frequent references to the tsunami that ravaged the coast of Tamil Nadu in December 2004 and conversations with survivors indicate that the journey must have been made in 2005 or 2006.
The idea, the author says in the first chapter, was to visit the lesser-known towns of coastal India and explore the regional foods in all their variety. What drives him is the prospect of ending each day with "feasts for both the eye and the palate", but, given his budgetary constraints, bananas become a dietary staple - he gorges on eight bananas a day, eating a total of 1,400 (the figure mentioned in the book's title) in six months. He makes up for the lack of variety by eating large quantities of the inexpensive local street food, describing in great detail how vendors prepare each dish and only indulges in a mini feast on his 33rd birthday, which he spends in Diu.
Describing himself as a "travelling gourmand", he is surprisingly unaffected by all the street food he eats. The reference to "76 towns" is not explained, but one infers that it must have been the number of towns he drove through, while the reference to "1 million people" remains a mystery. Could he really have met so many people? Oddly again, hardly any dates are mentioned. The only map is a most unsatisfactory sketch, and the tiny sketches of scenes that the author comes across tell the reader little.
Mr Nazareth's sheer inquisitiveness gives the book the level of detail of an hourly maintained diary. The tone is a curious mix of wry humour and stiff and formal Victorian English. (Sample the following sentence, in the section on Jamnagar, where he mentions his decision to use the postal service to communicate: "With the intention of living up to my epistolary resolution, I enter the school post office.") One would have thought that a travelogue needed a more relaxed and conversational style.
However, there are insightful observations about those he meets on his journey - both local residents and fellow tourists - and his encounters are both amusing and a revealing comment on his fellow countrymen. There are detailed conversations with rickshaw-drivers, priests, itinerant salesmen and especially fishermen, some of whom he accompanies when they go out to sea. Mr Nazareth soaks up information about their lifestyles and the techniques they use to make their boats and nets. His interest in all things nautical is a mystery until he explains that before taking up a desk job he had "travelled the oceans as part of a crew engaged in protecting the environment" and had once also been a deckhand on a converted North Sea trawler. He tells us little else about himself.
Mr Nazareth is blessed with an equable temperament. He finds that grabbing a seat in a bus is akin to fighting his way through a wrestling ring, and most budget hotels are far from ideal in hygiene and cleanliness. He is often denied accommodation because he is travelling alone, and language is a barrier in several states - but to him all these are par for the course. He merely records every experience, mostly in a non-judgemental way. A mild sense of irritation is all that he allows himself - at infrequent intervals at that - at the far-from-ideal conditions or the idiosyncracies and intrusiveness of his co-passengers, who ask him the most personal questions and freely offer advice, including on how he can improve his marital prospects and why he should stop being a wastrel and take up a job instead.
Mr Nazareth often goes off at a tangent, interrupting his narrative with private musings and epiphanies. Sample this: "Being in perpetual motion, the Mumbaikar has evolved into a species with blinkers. They only look ahead and cannot deviate from the path the city chooses for them. To do so would make them dysfunctional." Again, overhearing one man tell another matter-of-factly that a cheque for Rs 10 lakh has not bounced, he concludes: "In Mumbai, privacy has nothing to do with proximity, but with the knowledge that people are too busy to pay attention." And on the subject of technology, he writes that "there is no truth to the statement that technology enhances freedom. In fact, technology creates an unnatural need to communicate". Such musings are merely minor distractions.
With his eye for detail and descriptive ability, Mr Nazareth has produced a tour diary that makes for absorbing reading. It is a welcome addition to the genre, for travelogues - as distinct from travel guides - on India by Indians in the English language are a recent trend.
