Not France 1

                     “The speed of jet travel appears to have eliminated the distinctions
                       between geography and philosophy…which means that although  
                       one can get anywhere, one is packing all the wrong things for
                       simple survival, let alone for having a lovely time.”
                                                                                     Gita Mehta, Karma Cola


The altitude and dysentery made the other confusion even worse for Julie.
“Julee!” They said, greeting us with their friendly Tibetan bright eyes, brown faces and ivory smiles.
“Julie!” She thought they were calling her. It was just their word for hello.
The first to say it was Soman, sitting astride his bicycle on the tarmac. He convinced us of the merits of his guesthouse, and put us on a three rupee rickety wreck of a J&K bus into town. We passed under the medieval nine-storied 17th century domination of Leh Palace, modeled on the Potala in Lhasa. The deserted white stone monolith, with its massive inwardly sloped buttressed walls and projecting wooden balconies, gave no hint of the colors of the crushed gemstone Thangka paintings inside.
On the bus we met Carol, a Washington lawyer working for the World Bank. Instant friends all round. Soman had a complimentary jeep taxi waiting to take us the two kilometers to his Changspa guesthouse. It was bright and spacious, with two big, Spartan, whitewashed rooms. Carol and Julie took one, and Robyn and I dropped our packs in the other. The jeep took us back into town. The main street ran between square whitewashed walls and square wood timbers. The sun had that rarified air glare sparkle, and the fine dust came off the ground like I remember it did half a world away.
The Ladakhi women weren’t just suntanned, they were suncreased peanut butter bronzed. It would have been a mistake to misinterpret their slow movement for dimwittedness. Pig-tailed, top-hatted and plump, they sat cross-legged in rows on the main drag, selling their root vegetables. Their smiles were gold-capped, and their hearts were big, and beat strong. I bought some fresh peas from an ancient grinning beauty and, for a moment, thought I was back in Bolivia. How I would have loved to have arranged a meeting between the two mamitas from the two continents, and watch them gasp in Tibetan and Quechua.
“Julee!” Called the Kashmiri shopkeepers. But they didn’t mean it in the same way.
Because we needed to go to the bank, and Carol was one, we arranged to meet her later. There was only one financial institution in Leh, the small, infrequently open State Bank of India. Julie and Robyn and I entered, to find a single ticket booth populated by a single moustached teller, and a tier of bleachers, populated by most of the foreign travelers in Ladakh. They looked tired and forlorn, and had obviously been there awhile.
Changing traveler’s cheques in the more remote places of the World was always frustrating and time-consuming. It usually involved triplicate pads and single-mindedness, and we thought we knew the drill. But the State Bank of India still had more gods than rupees, and had festooned them all with the bloody British red tape of the Raj. Bureaucrats in India are called ‘Babu’ in Hindi, which also means father in the same language. One must never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies. And the mother of all massive fantasies, at the State Bank of India, was the illusion of customer service.
The babu in the booth had a white part down the middle of his slicked down black hair. It was the Nazca landing strip of bank transactions. He glanced up momentarily to check our passport photos against our fallen faces, added our documents and traveler’s cheques, to the large stacks on both sides of him, handed us three round metal chits, and went back to whatever babus do, when they’re not babuing.
The word chit is also from Hindi, ‘chiṭṭī.’ And so it was. We looked down at our chitty chits to find embossed numbers, but not so you would know there was any sequential order. We took our places on the babu’s bleachers.
Nothing happened for an hour, and then it happened. A middle-aged Frenchman entered the proceedings. You could tell he was French because he wore a beret, and he spoke French. What you couldn’t tell was which planet he had arrived from. His wardrobe was white, real white. Not the kind of white you might get from pounding your cotton on river rocks in India all day long. Starched white. Never seen a single bacterium white. Shirt and pants white.
He cast a condescending glance in our direction, and thought better of it. He approached Babu. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat. Babu was deeply babuing. He dropped his passport and traveler’s cheque on Babu’s counter. This got Babu’s attention but not his eye contact, except for a moment to check the photo against the Frenchman. Babu handed him a chitty chit. The Frenchman eyed it suspiciously. He looked over to us. We were all smiling. Waiting. He turned back to Babu.
“Allo.” He said. Nothing. “Allo.” He said again, louder. Babu looked up. We winced in pain.
“What is this? He asked, looking at the chitty chit. “I want my monnaie. I want my passeport.” Babu went back to babuing. The starch in the Frenchman’s white stiffened. He looked back at us. No joy here. He pounded his fist on the counter. Babu pushed a button, Showtime.
The curtain behind Babu opened. Standing behind him was a larger version, moustache, white Nazca line landing strip, greased black hair, suit.
“I am the bank manager.” He said. You could feel the building tremble, just a little. “What is going on here?” The Frenchman channeled his inner Napoleon.
“I am waiting here.” He said smugly. “I want my monnaie. I want my passeport!” The manager stood taller.
“So you must wait over there, with the others.” The Frenchman’s starch turned to concrete.
“Where is my monnaie? I demand my passeport. This would not happen in my country!” He shouted, with obvious superiority. The bank manager, unfamiliar with the obvious Gallic charm, asked the question on every schoolboy’s lips in the subcontinent.
“What is your country?” And the answer was snooty, like he should have known.
“I come from France!” He exclaimed, with distain.
The Indian bank manager rocked back on his heels, and inhaled. We cringed.
“But this is not France.” He said. “This is...INDIA!”
The bleachers rose in a standing ovation. The starch in the Frenchman sagged in defeat.
The reason the British had the word queue was that the French thought they had no further need of it. He joined us quietly, in the bleachers.
Chitty chitty bang bang.