- Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, 1935
“I come to the full realization that if this isn’t Hell, well, we at least got a fair picture of what its like down there."
- Brett Williams, 2009
Hampi – 20 Hours Ago
Laura clutches my arm, her body unsteady, her feet uncertain of where to place themselves next. She grabs hold of the concrete wall on her right as we attempt the two-storey descent down the narrow steps to the street below.
She casts her sullen, grey face to the ground in an attempt to block out the overload of stimuli bombarding her senses from all sides and focuses on commanding the muscles in her legs, those that will still listen, to move, and from trying to convince her stomach to stop playing skip-rope with her intestines. She seems to be coping so far, but the amount of weight being shifted onto me is a good indication that that may not last.
We cross the street, managing to side-step the vast array of animal droppings that litter the cobblestone and up the flight of stairs to the first storey of the guesthouse Andrea’s staying at.
I prop Laura against the wall, unlock and open the door, and allow her to collapse onto the bed in a crumpled heap.
Anjuna Beach, Goa – 5 Days Ago
My first instinct is to respect the man’s religious conviction. He has, after all, crossed himself each time we’ve passed a church, chapel, or any one of the many brightly decorated paper Christmas stars that have dotted the landscape all the way up the coast of Kerala.
Then again, it makes me think: maybe he knows something I don’t. Maybe I’m missing the big picture here. Maybe I’m taking for granted the fact that we are all here, alive, our bodies only superficially violated, our wallets and passports, along with our wits, very much with us.
Thank God. No, really. That’s what this guy is trying to tell me. I should be thanking God for the fact that I am still sitting here, that Laura and Andrea are still sitting here, with the thought that at any moment in the last twelve hours something could have gone terribly wrong, but thankfully did not, and I’d have to say much is due to the workings of Providence in its many mysterious forms – including Benny-Philip and the vocal stylings of Celine Dion.
“She’s Canadian,” I’d stated proudly, not sure of what I was proud of exactly, the desire to overcome a seemingly insurmountable language barrier over-coming my better judgement. I suppose I had been looking for some way to connect, to bridge the gulf, to celebrate a shared cultural experience made possible by the rhythms of “My Heart Will Go On,” who despite his grizzled and hardened features, seemed to resonate even in the heart of Fagin the Jew, who along with the artful Dodger and the rest of his embittered gang had shared the few inches of space we’d been able to secure for ourselves during the long journey here.
I suppose the shock has yet to wear off. The adrenaline is still pumping through my veins – that last push, trapped as I had been in a sea of clawing limbs, shouts, and human stench, had left me, albeit momentarily, a little shaken and more than a little irritable. I guess that’s what ten hours in unreserved seating on an overnight train in India will do to you, added to the fact that it’s almost dawn and I’ve yet to get any substantial sleep.
Yes, I should be more grateful. And I am. Especially when we finally pull up to our guesthouse. It’s sill dark and I can see my breath form a cloud of vapor in front of my face as I open the door of the van and step onto the gravel shoulder.
There is a man – mid-twenties, ethnically ambiguous – standing beside the road just a few feet from where the van stopped. I had noticed him as we had pulled up and thought it unusual that he seemed completely unperturbed by the arrival of a van in the dead of night, whose headlights had cast a vicious glare over his otherwise vacant and sedate expression.
The man stood motionless, unblinking, arms at his side, his body uncomfortably erect like a cigar store Indian keeping a never-ending vigil outside the gate that separated the road from the driveway of the darkened guesthouse.
We pass through the gate and on up to the house, which is flanked on either side by tall trees whose shadows below are punctuated only by the myriad of brightly coloured Christmas lights adorning the house’s rooftop terrace.
The hopeful anticipation of soon climbing into a nice, hard, uncomfortable bed immediately recedes as we discover that a second gate, placed at the top of the steps leading up to the porch, blocks our passage to the front door of the house, and more importantly, the doorbell. Without a way of alerting the owners of the guesthouse that we have in fact arrived, we look around us in desperation for an alternative to simply pressing the doorbell with our fingers in the conventional way.
The man I had encountered by the side of the road is still standing where I had seen him last, staring intently down the darkened road at seemingly nothing, but apparently everything. Laura approaches him and asks him if he’s staying here and did he know how we might go about contacting the owners of the guesthouse.
“Do you have a room?” he asks, seeming, for the first time, to acknowledge the fact that we were indeed there.
“Yeah, we called ahead and booked a room,” says Andrea.
“So you have a room?”
“Well, technically yes,” explains Laura, “we just haven’t checked in yet, so we don’t have a key to get in.”
“But you called in?”
“Yes, they should be expecting us.”
“I told them we’d probably be getting in around this hour,” explains Andrea.
“Well, it shouldn’t be a problem then,” he says, moving from the spot where he’d been planted for the entire evening as far as I knew. He passes through the gate and marches up the drive. “All you gotta do is press the buzzer.”
“Yeah, we thought of that,” I say. “There’s just the small matter of the gate.”
“Oh. Oh yeah. Huh. But you have a room?” a puzzled look forming on his face as he rests his forefinger on his chin.
“Well, technically yes,” I explain, re-iterating what the girls had already told him.
“Oh, okay. Well there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But how do we get in?” asks Laura.
“You don’t have a key?”
“No, we haven’t checked in yet. That’s why we have to get in touch with the people who own the place.”
“Oh.”
At this point we resort to calling out in hushed, hesitant tones, hoping that someone inside will hear and acknowledge our pleas. With no sound or movement from inside to indicate that our attempts have been successful, it is decided that Laura and Andrea will head down the street in search of a phone, while I am to remain to guard our bags and further develop the friendship that I had begun with the cigar store Indian.
“Where have you come from?” he asks.
“Calicut. We just got off the train.”
“Oh. And you have a room here?”
“Yes. One of the girls called ahead. They should be expecting us.”
“Well, hopefully you called ahead. She’s really strict here. She might not like it if you didn’t call ahead.”
“We called ahead.”
“Should be no problem then.”
“Great.”
I start pacing by the side of the road to see if I can get a glimpse of the girls and to put some distance between myself and the cigar store Indian, whom I feel should be adorned with a sign that reads: “Works in Progress.” I conclude that any amount of distance between he and I is a good distance to have, especially should I require a head start if he were to all of a sudden start frothing at the mouth and begin chasing me with an as yet unseen blunt object whose sole purpose was to inflict a great deal of excruciating pain and long-lasting bodily injury.
The notion becomes a reality in my mind, and why not? This seemed like a predictable yet unexpected plot twist after all. Something to keep the reader going for at least another fifty pages or so, thus increasing the overall price-point for the book and lending the kind of authority and supposed sophistication that only big books can achieve. You never question a big book, really. It’s a big book – someone must have had something say. Something important, surely.
Sure, the train would have been the most likely of places to have met our ends, our screams of panic and terror drowned out by the thunderous rhythm of steel pistons and screeching brakes, our bodies disposed of quietly in the still of night, dumped from the train, only to be found by a cattle-herder the next morning leading his cows to graze on a nearby hillside.
It would have made sense then. Then we had our guards up. Our wits about us. Alert to any change in the movements or moods of those around us. It had been a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’
But now that we least expected it, after we had allowed ourselves to breathe in a collective sigh, to have already patted each other on the backs as an indication of a job well done, to have announced a winner before all of the votes had been counted, the possibility of the end was perhaps even more likely than at any other time in the least likely of places.
The girls return having been unsuccessful in their search. We decide to resume our strategy of hushed shouts in order to rouse the owner of the guesthouse from her sleep. Our efforts meet with the same lack of success, until, that is, Andrea ventures towards the side of the house and startles a sleeping dog who bursts out with a string of manic, machine-gun barks that emanate from the dense foliage and dark shadows.
“You did say you had a room, right?” asks the cigar store Indian, whose train of thought appears to remain unbroken despite the sounds of hell-born fury emerging from the darkened garden.
“No,” I finally concede. “We don’t have a room. We thought we’d just show up in the middle of the night, unannounced, during the busiest time of the year, pick the first place that appeared on the outside to be reputable, and assumed that we would have no problems finding a couple of beds.”
“Oh,” he replies, staring at me intently. “You should have called ahead.”
Hampi – 19 Hours, 50 Minutes Ago
“How is she?”
“Not good. She must have picked up something. She’s out.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s just us.”
“You up for a bike ride?”
“Sure, sounds good.”
Wyanad Wildlife Sanctuary – 6 Days Ago
I’m not going to fuck up this shot. There’s no way. I can’t afford to. This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot. I’m not going to get another shot like this one, not with this light. This is absolutely spectacular.
It’s just us, in this moment, nothing else.
There is an overwhelming sense of awe that overcomes us as we are forced to do nothing but hold our breaths and allow ourselves to be spirited away by the sheer majesty of what we see before us.
This is it. This is what we came here for. This makes it all worth it.
I set the aperture, focus, and take the shot.
Hampi – 19 Hours, 30 Minutes Ago
I manage to get the shot before I’m forced to get down on all fours. Dirt and gravel grind into the flesh of my palm, creating nothing more than a minor discomfort from the cascading sea of nausea that has swallowed me whole, each wave slamming me under and pulling me back with the undertow.
I lurch forward, the muscles in my abdomen struggle and strain unsuccessfully, weakened as they have become, to perform the task of releasing my body from its current state of paralyzing agony.
I can feel my diaphragm give in with each heave, refusing and incapable of pushing any further. Whatever’s down there is just going to have to stay there. Sit tight. Or else find another way out.
I’ve been crouching down like this for some time, the occasional car or rickshaw slowing down just long enough to take in the scene, when I finally get back on my feet; the need to get out of the hot, scorching sun becoming more pressing than the need to find some sense of internal equilibrium. The river of sweat running down my back serves to remind me that India can be hot after all.
I grab hold of the bike and begin walking it slowly around the bend where I’d last seen Andrea turn.
She’s sitting just a few meters away, protected by the shade of a crumbling wall of a centuries-old Islamic fortress. I park my bike by the side of the road and slump down beside her.
“I can’t believe this,” she says.
“You can’t believe what?”
“We’ve gone what, one, two kilometers? And that’s it. I’m done.”
“I just spent the last few minutes dry-heaving.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. You know, I’m really beginning to be tired of feeling this way.”
“It’s as if our bodies have completely degenerated over the past few weeks.”
“A steady diet of white toast and Snickers bars will do that to you.”
“Our diet certainly has been sub-optimal.”
“You don’t need to tell me. I’m looking forward to eating something real. Something substantial. Something that won’t cause me to feel an overwhelming sense of dread that lasts for hours as I anticipate what effect it’ll have on me. You know, I’d just really like to sit back, enjoy a good, solid meal, and not worry that I’m going to see it again in a few hours.”
“I just want some veg. I think that’s all I’ll eat for the next month. Straight up veg.”
“Word.”
Feeling a little rejuvenated, we get up and amble through a labyrinth of crumbling stone and foundations, stopping more than occasionally to soak up the rugged elegance of an age long past. That, and it feels good to just sit, stop and relax. Not like we have a choice.
Still, it could be worse.
The Unreserved Car, Somewhere Between Calicut and Goa – 5 Days Ago
As if sitting on a flat wooden bench for nearly ten hours isn’t bad enough. As if the weasely, pock-marked Indian curled up beside me, his legs dangling out the window, his chin lodged firmly in my side, isn’t a big enough discomfort, throwing out any notions of personal boundaries and as we speak re-defining the meaning of unwanted intimacy. As if the guy lying on the floor beneath our feet – his limbs sprawling in all directions, making it impossible to stretch our legs – isn’t a big enough inconvenience. As if the fact that Laura and Andrea are the only women in a car built for thirty but housing a hundred isn’t enough to generate an acute apprehension for their safety and well-being, subjected, as they are, to constant leers and stares from a multitude of sexually-repressed men huddled together en masse in every conceivable corner of the train car. One hundred sets of eyes, unblinking, unaware of anything but the beacons of white in a sea of darkness.
As if that isn’t bad enough.
But then this guy had to get on the train. Him and his obnoxious entourage. As if the assholes piled up around us weren’t bad enough. But this guy. This guy’s something else entirely. He seems wild, unpredictable. His wide, circular eyes bulge out from his face, that, coupled with his wide, manic grin, seem to communicate the kind of lucid clarity that only insanity can provide, and imply that at any moment, on any given whim, that he could, and would, slit our throats without a moment’s hesitation.
Or maybe it’s the fact that he looks like an extra from Fame that really frightens me. I mean really, what kind of person wears a sweatband as a fashion statement? Not someone I would trust, I can tell you that much.
I look down at Laura who has managed to carve up some prime real estate on our bench, allowing herself to curl up in a tight fetal position with much of her upper body resting on my lap. With Laura fast asleep, I look up at Andrea who is sitting opposite us, closest to the aisle. Her jaw set, her expression one of grim determination - nothing would be worse, I sense she realizes, than to fall asleep at this moment.
In a valiant effort at solidarity, I resolve to fight off the desire to close my eyes and keep vigil alongside Andrea. I will not fall asleep. I dare not fall asleep - for all our sakes.
The Overnight Bus, Somewhere Between Goa and Hampi – 3:00 AM, 2 Days Ago
I’m shaken awake from a deep sleep that a few hours ago I never conceived would be possible. I suppose sleep had come naturally, in the way that a small child seeks refuge in slumber as a way of escaping the horrors of a traumatic event. Sure, I’m no child, despite evidence to the contrary (even my stubborn refusal to acknowledge the adjective “grown-up” as a part of my own personal lexicon), but the trauma was real. The escape necessary.
“Wake up,” Andrea says.
“What is it?”
“Can we switch bunks?”
Switch bunks? I glance over at Laura, sleeping soundly. Switch bunks? Really? But I’m so comfortable here. Laura’s so warm, comforting. There’s a sense of safety and calm emanating from Laura. Here, in this dark abyss of depravity and stark madness that is the Paulo Tours night bus from Goa to Hampi, Laura is the center that will, despite all things to the contrary, hold. How could I possibly willingly agree to leave the only place - the only person - that offers some semblance of stability and security in this cramped, diesel-fueled, multi-passenger transport careening without abandon to the deepest depths of Hell itself?
“Sure.” I bunch up my sleeping bag and see to it that Andrea slides in safely beside Laura before slapping the stowaway who’d been nuzzling up to Andrea and indicating that he should move the hell over so that I can claim the aisle bunk. No way am I going to get pinned against the window by this asshole who not only did not purchase a legitimate ticket, but who, because of his desire to dry hump the lone female passenger sleeping in the berth he’d decided to rest beside, has left me cold and alone and miserable and irritable and wanting nothing more than a warm body to sleep beside. I kick him once more for good measure and curl up, my back facing him.
Just try it pal. Just try and make a move. One dry hump and that’s it for you, pal. You picked the wrong day and the wrong person to start this shit. I’ve got you and you know it. There isn’t shit you can do. They’d hang you out to dry and probably let me take a few potshots at you as they held you back, handcuffs biting into your skin causing you to bleed. Shit, they’d probably do a lot worse. Like put you in a damp, darkened cell, infested with rats and cockroaches the size of rats, with barred windows that overlooked an open-air landfill with peaks and valleys of rotting produce and burning plastic. And they’d stick you in there with the Russian.
The Russian, who spent the first four hours of this trip in a drug and alcohol induced frenzy, who bribed the conductor to stop and pick up some Cokes to mix with his whiskey, which he in turn, shared with said conductor, and whose erratic, blithering and often incomprehensible demands for a light or a smoke or something, something, goddammit to light up his hash, had kept me awake and tense anticipating the worse possible outcomes.
So lay there. Don’t make a move. Don’t let me even hear you breathe. Asshole. I close my eyes and try to contain the anger and bitterness that has swelled inside me, knowing furthermore that any chance of me getting any more sleep on this trip is less than likely.
I come to the full realization that if this isn’t Hell, well, we at least got a fair picture of what its like down there.
Hampi - 14 Hours Ago
Andrea lifts her backpack over her shoulders and buckles the strap around her waist. We follow her and the driver down to the end of the lane, near to where he has parked his rickshaw.
We stop and hug goodbye, words incapable of expressing the bonds created between all three of us during the last few weeks, forged as they have been in the shared experience of indigestion, black lungs, motion sickness and an overdose of white toast.
So we say little. There is little to say. Whatever is felt, whatever has been experienced, simply is. And that’s enough.
She glances over her shoulder before turning the corner and says “I’ll see you at the wedding,” and then she is gone.
Laura and I are standing in the middle of the crowded lane, children and women and cattle winding through the narrow street and around us. I turn to Laura as the camera pulls back into an extreme long-shot, revealing the rooftops of the white-washed granite hovels that line the road, the impressive golden-hued Virupaksha Temple looming over the immediate horizon and ask, “What is she talking about?”
Arambol Beach, Goa – 4 Days Ago
“So tell me,” she says, in an accent that I associate with the shadier parts of East London that I’ve only read about in books and seen in movies and where every man has a thick round head and wears leather and chains hanging from his nostrils to his ears that jut out the sides and screams “Oy!” every time he busts someone over the head with a shattered beer bottle of the cheapest variety, “what has been your most spiritual experience in India.” She takes a long drag from her cigarette before continuing. “’Cause don’t tell me you haven’t had one spiritual experience in India, because if you haven’t, you need to get out of this fucking country now, because you just didn’t get it.”
I pause, reflect, and before saying anything, contemplate how much of a cliché this one person really is. I mean, come on. This is too easy. This chick pretty much writes herself. Why do I need to even continue typing this? Is it necessary?
Listen honey, maybe there’s something here you missed out on. Maybe you should be the one to get out of the fucking country now and save yourself, and these people, from any more misery than that which already exists. Perhaps in your three weeks sitting on a balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea in one of the most ridiculously tourist-centric places in India, getting high and drunk and laid and high and drunk from dawn till dusk and from dusk till dawn, you were incapable of seeing past the tip of your cigarette or beyond the bottom of your empty beer bottle to at least recognize on some level the excruciating poverty and suffering that is a daily part of the lives of millions of people here who are simply doing what they can to survive. Have you been that oblivious? Have you chosen not to see it? What would you say to that kid, not more than three, moustache crudely drawn on his upper lip, being forced to dance and somersault in time with the beating of his sister’s drum on the side of the road begging for food and money? What would you say to him? Would you ask him what his most recent spiritual experience was? Would you? Do you know what his response would be? He’d say the most spiritual experience he’s had is knocking you unconscious with his sister’s drumstick and running off with your money. Because it’s about survival, baby. And if paying homage to Krishna was to fuel me with hope for a day when I would be delivered from this life of drudgery and cruel hardship, I’d be first in line too.
“Yeah, no, I can’t think of anything.”
“That’s a shame. Really is.”
Bangalore – Now
We are walking through Cubbon Park a few hours after sunrise trying to pass the time between our arrival by train to our departure this evening back to Singapore.
Everything around us seems familiar: there are piles of rubbish where grass should be – toxic smoke billowing upwards through the trees. Oh, and the dogs. We can’t forget the dogs.
Yet despite this feeling of nostalgia, there is something altogether unfamiliar; as if I’m seeing this place for the first time with a new set of eyes. It’s as if I’ve been granted the ability to perceive things differently, to seek out and appreciate beauty and tranquility in places where before such notions were not at all considered.
It is a moment of undisputed clarity and deep understanding for the circularity of our journey, not simply in the physical sense, but in a spiritual one as well. Without searching for it and without recognizing it until this moment in time, as we retrace the steps of ourselves three weeks prior, we have come to attain a greater sense of ourselves and the harsh realities of the world around us.
It is with this in mind that I begin to consider that despite the pollution, mangy dogs, burning piles of rubbish, incessant honking, bumpy roads, erratic driving, crowded trains, crowded buses, crowded cities, urine-soaked streets, feces, insects, food poisoning, diarrhea, vomit, dry-heaving, Snickers bars, Lay’s potato chips and toast-butter-jam, that the entire journey has been a profound and invaluable one.
We have been changed. Our outlooks altered. There’s no turning back.
We exit the park and continue in the direction of M.G. Road when I stop suddenly, my entire body paralyzed by an overwhelming sense of relief and elation.
“What is it?” Laura asks.
I point westward along the congested street, my body shaking in a kind of religious fervor as I whisper, “McDonald’s.”
FIN
More Pictures from Wyanad Wildlife Sanctuary
More Photos from Arambol Beach, Goa
Images of Old Goa
More Pictures from Hampi
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