Have you ever been to a Japanese restaurant where there is a little train that goes around the track. It’s been a number of years since we've had them in North America but they have them in Taipei and I was quite impressed. How it works is that the train goes around the track. The sushi makers put different kinds of sushi on little plate and then put those plates on little flatbed cars. Every plate has a price. At the end of the meal, you call for your bill and the cashier counts up your plates and tells you how much to pay. This is a much better way than sushi restaurants are going back home. All this all-you-can-eat stuff is for the birds. In India, I’m alway thinking about food. In India, I’m reading a book about randomness. In India, I’m traveling with Peter and Wendy, two of the worst travellers imaginable.
Peter’s laundry The road is littered with big messy splats of sacred cow shit, and orange and soupy stray dog shit - I’m always watching dogs and increasingly watching for signs of dogs. There are squatting people, shitting in the gutters and on the beaches like Easter Island enjoying the soft poop and the ocean vista simultaneously. Shit, shit, shit, minefields of shit. Baby shit on the bus between the seats. And bird shit, shit from above. India is a crowded communal barnyard bathroom, humanity at its most basic level. In the bus station bathroom the toilet has not been flushed in months, I add my mud to the top of the pyramid. Before lunch, Peter sends his clothes out to be laundered. “It’ll be back at eight o’clock” says the boy, smiling white. Later we are out enjoying the evening dust and mayhem of small-town India. Peter says, “It’s almost eight, we’d better get back to the hotel”. So we hurry back. We lounge in the room, sitting on our cots, playing cribbage across a dilapidated tea table. At ten, Peter says, “maybe he meant eight tomorrow morning.” “Maybe he sold them,” I say. The next morning after nine, Peter is still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, a blue t-shirt and a pair of cotton, grey trousers. I say, “Let’s go. We’re not waiting for laundry”. On the sidewalk, I spy my moneychanger, “You take the point”, I tell Peter. I’ve watched too many war movies and cop shows. “Wait for me at the corner”. I’ve walked past this guy ten times everyday for the past three days but today I’m ready with two twenties when he says in his conspiratorial tone, “change money?" “Yeah”, I say, “how much?”, his eyebrows shoot up, we agree on a head bobbling good rate. “Wait here”, he says, and then disappears for a half minute then suddenly reappears in a cloud of exhaust from an over-crowded city bus. There are Hindus hanging off the back. He thrusts a wad of folded money into my hand, snatches the two twenties from my hand and disappears again. It’s like magic. Not talking dog magic but still magical. The hawkers, the hackers, the street urchin and half-naked rubes envelop me again on the sidewalk. “Oh, shit he robbed me”, I think, as I move quickly down the sidewalk counting dirty wrinkled rupees. All there, I stuff them into different pockets. Peter is surrounded with beggars when I reach him on the corner. He’s got his elbows tucked in and his hands around his face like a girl who has seen a bee. I reach in and yank him out of the skinny midget rag clad crowd. “You’re popular” I say, “let’s go’. Tea and toast, for breakfast we order from the two shirtless wonderboys behind the counter. We find a table near the back, our eyes adjust to the light, filtering in only from the street. One wonderboy decides that since this is breakfast time and the restaurant is busy, it would be a good time to move the filth around the floor with a wet towel. Cleaning out the dancehall, the other picks his nose and flicks flying rhinos out into the street. Daydreaming. My toast has a rhino on it when it arrives. A little twinkling nugget of gold, I rip the slice in half and flip the offending piece under the table. I enjoy the tea, spicy, thick and sweet. Back at the hotel that night, before eight we arrive, to await Peter’s clean laundry. It doesn’t show up. “You stink”, I say, just to bug him. The next morning we are awaken by a tapping at the door. Peter’s laundry has arrived, nicely folded. Peter pays the boy and begins to get dressed in fresh duds. Happy now. Simple pleasures. “Hey” he says, these are dirtier than when I sent them out. “And look here. There was a big white blob of bird shit over his left breast pocket.
Ahmedabad is one of those cities that every single road in the country seems to pass through Stop for a moment and you’ll notice a camel giving birth just off the intersection, in the noonday sun. There will be a nose picking, booger flinging young man on the back of a 90cc motorcycle, overtaking a brightly painted and chrome acid trip belching diesel bus with a comical crowd of colourful sarong and moustache wearing men. The intersection will be a jostling influx, like a thoroughly blocked pastel green semi-supple warm marble expanding into the deepest cavities of miscomprehension. The light turns green, another 20 seconds of miscellaneous land junk will crawl through the red and with India being a spiritual illusion brought on by hunger, by weariness, we trust karma to carry us across without being hit by a corner turning Ambassador, a betel juice spitting bicycle rickshaw-man, a buffalo with bankrupt brakes, momentously pulling a cart overloaded with wicker baskets hanging, swinging rhythmically. Yeah. Just like that. Outside our room, on the fourth floor balcony, I’m watching the thermal injected sun, a bruise in the sky turning from banana to orange, cranberry to grape. Two monkeys scramble over the corrugated and concrete rooftops, with wild eyes, patches of fur lost to the diseases of vermin and city life. I quickly get inside my room. I’ve been told that they carry rabies and bite. They jump onto my balcony, chattering wildly, knocking around the furniture, enjoying their smug freedom and the taste of my tea and cigarettes. I submit to their sardonic berating. It is all my fault. Peter and I ditched Wendy on the Isle of Dui. I tell Peter, It’s time to hit the road for Bombay.
Struggling through the bus, women with half-naked children, men in their towels and moustaches, luggage of every description, sheets tied up into sacks, bags of fruit and curried whatnots and whocares. I take the inside seat, leaving Peter as my buffer, my entertainment, green as grass traveler, he does everything wrong.
Bus rides have a way of boring people and when they are bored, they bore. Bore with questions and conversation. And entertain, as only Hindus can do, parodies of themselves, isolated from reality.
“Where are you from?”
“Why did you come to my country?”
“How much did your watch, shirt, airline ticket cost?”
“Would you like to borrow my hair oil?”
“Tell me about free love?”
The painted bus red, blue and yellow with chrome icons of Shiva and lesser gods, rattling and bumping our way up to a hill station, have a look at how rich Hindus and foreigners escaped the heat of the summer months in the glory days of the Raj.
Daydreaming out my open window, the landscape dry dusty with scrub grass, haven’t had the monsoons for several years, good for us though, the chance of getting malaria is slim.
“How you feeling, my man?” I ask Peter, a few hours into the trip.
“Bad guts”
I love travelling with this guy. Every three four days, crippling diarrhea spicing things up. Today’s no different as a little while later Peters doubled over and starts groaning, moaning.
“I gotta get off the bus.”
“What? Here?”
“Yeah, see if you can get the bus driver to stop.”
“No way, we are in the middle of nowhere”
“This is perfect. Get him to stop. Get him to stop, now.”
So I struggle up to the front of the bus, over packages, around people.
“My friend is really sick. Can you stop the bus for a second?”
The driver cranes his neck to look back then bobbles his head. I never know if this means yes or no.
“Just stop for a moment, please. He’s going to make a terrible mess, in your bus”.
He slows and then stops abruptly. I am pressed against the windshield. Peter comes flying up the aisle, half crouching, half-bending and out the door and into the field opposite the bus. He yanks his shabby looking pants down and sprays.
I laugh out loud, the rest of the bus murmur and point, big smiles.
Further down the road. “Feeling better?”
“Forgot to take paper. Used a ten rupee note.
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