Me, Prime Minister Modi and the Chicken’s Head

When Pakistan broke away from India, it made India look like a chicken with a very skinny neck.

My apartment is in Siliguri and Siliguri is one of the easiest places to find in all of India. It’s in the state of West Bengal – in the skinniest part of the chicken neck. See that part? 

Unfortunately, when the lines were drawn in 1947, East and West Pakistan ended up more than two thousand miles apart. That’s like moving West Virginia to the other side of the Rocky Mountains. A little hard to govern both. So East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

But for years I wondered, what’s going on in the Chicken’s Head? 

Fortunately, a friend of mine came from there and wanted to pay a visit to the old homestead and how would I like to come along? So we bought a couple train tickets.

Twelve hundred rupees (about 16 bucks) bought us a seven-hour ride through places I’d never seen. With strange and mysterious sounding names never before heard – Alipurduar, Fakiragram, Bongaigaon. Some with names no human tongue could utter with a potato in his mouth.  

The scenery was dramatic. Very hilly and valley-ly if that’s the word I want. It was a place where you got the feeling anything could happen. For instance, isn’t that a UFO that just landed when it thought no one was looking?

It must have caught me staring at it because when I blinked, it suddenly vanished! (Well, yes, the train was moving pretty fast and it may have been a very slow blink. Maybe more like a five-minute snooze. But the fact remains, next time I looked, it was gone!) 

And could there be some kind of geomagnetic field in the Chicken Head that compels  humans to stick their stupid head out the door of fast-moving trains? 

And let’s see you explain this unretouched photograph.  Note the man in the yellow shirt. Is he reading your mind? And is the man on the right sleeping with another man’s foot in his rama-lama-ding-dong? 

We arrived at Guwahati Station where my friend’s cousin picked us up.

It should have been a three-hour drive into the hills arriving at Shillong in time for dinner at about 9pm. But we were stopped by Narendra Modi. Prime Minister of India.

He was in town to give a speech and the whole city had to stand still while he did that. All traffic came to a halt. For three hours, nothing moved.

So while we’re waiting, I’ll give you the quick skinny on Mr. Modi.

He came from pretty humble origins – son of a street cart tea seller. Although he’s a super nationalist who alienates a huge percentage of the population, his party was elected twice. Business loves him and President Trump and Modi are pals. (“Howdy Modi!” the signs read in Texas when he came to visit.)

If he could flip a switch and have the 300 million Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Jews convert to Hinduism or leave, he’d probably do it. 900 million Hindus would like that.

On thing everyone likes about Prime Minister Modi is that he’s cleaning up the country. Literally.  Like Lady Bird Johnson did in the 1960’s with her Beautify America campaign. 

When I was a kid, picking up pop and beer bottles from the roadside could make you a pretty good chunk of change – upwards of 70-80 cents a day (which in 2020 dollars is probably like, I don’t know, a hundred and sixty bucks?) Those happy days are gone thanks to Lady Bird. That, plus slapping litterbugs with kneecap-busting fines. (They don’t make First Ladies like that anymore.)  

Okay, the traffic finally started moving but I’m way over my post limit. So we’ll pick up our Chicken Head trip next week. And visit the Rainest Place on Planet Earth.