How did I get here? She asked herself. But there wasn’t an answer.
Dev rode along, bouncing and smiling with the rest of them, his mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes. Ami noticed he’d changed his clothes—not that what he was wearing had ever become crumpled or dirty, he just suddenly decided to change. This time it was a pair of navy blue chinos with a woven leather belt and a smart yellow polo shirt, neatly tucked in. Same tennis shoes, same zip-up fleece jacket, same neatly combed hair and not even a trace of beard. He didn’t look like a man who intended to mount a camel.
Sometime in the late morning, the jeep pulled into a dusty camp and everyone climbed out. In the heat of the day, Ami regretted wearing pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Everyone else—excepting Dev—was dressed in loose, flowing layers.
“You have scarf, Madam?” the camel man asked. Ahmed, Dev had introduced him.
Ami produced a length of fabric from her day pack, and allowed the man to wrap it over her hair and ears. His hands were rough, his face wrinkled and brown—he looked nearly seventy, except for the twinkle in his eyes and the way he easily threw his leg onto the back of the kneeling camel.
“Like this,” he demonstrated, and then the camel rose with him sitting there, one leg crossed in a half lotus like he was about to begin a mediation.
She settled herself onto the lumpy back of a smaller camel, the one Ahmed called Babaloo, and let herself bob and sway as the camel hefted itself to standing. And then they were off, leaving Dev back at the camp talking with the men.
Ami wondered if he’d stay there all night, waiting for her, or if he would catch a ride back to town and stay at the hotel… and then the desert began to swallow her thoughts and she rode, falling into Babaloo’s surprisingly steady groove, inching across the desert toward nothingness.
(image from www.solarnavigator.net)
Arun appeared at the back of the hotel where Dev was wiping the Ambassador down with a clean rag. He tried to look around nonchalantly, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Where are the girls?” Dev asked.
“It’s not like I could bring them with me…”
“Yes, of course, but are they meeting us?”
Arun pulled his own handkerchief from his pocket and helped his friend wipe down the car, lifting dust from its chrome and from the headlights.
“They’re not coming.” Dev answered for himself.
Arun sighed and sat heavily on the car’s bumper. “They’re not the right sort of girls,” he began, rather crossly. “American college girls. What do they know about India? They’re just out for a good time, spending Daddy’s money.”
Dev sat beside his friend, looking out across the darkening courtyard. Probably Arun had been too forward, scared the girls off. Or maybe things had progressed too far and now he felt embarrassed—or the girl did. Either way, Dev didn’t really care if they saw the girls or not. In fact, he was relieved that the plan had changed. He’d met Arun’s college girls before and found them hard to take. Chatty, loud, annoying. But he didn’t say any of that, he just sat and waited, watching the light fall from the sky, listening to the grumble in his stomach that told him it was time to find some supper.
What Arun didn’t say, as he lingered in the shared silence, was that it was his decision to keep the girls out of it. He hadn’t pushed Melita to do anything, in fact it was she who had been forward. But he wouldn’t tell Dev. Let him think what he wanted. It wasn’t really about waiting until marriage—Arun wasn’t old fashioned—but pushy girls put him off.
He’d met Melita at a café she’d named—a hole in the wall catering to tourists who think they’re having a genuine Indian experience just because the place is filthy. They never even look around to notice no Indian people are eating in there—only westerners in Sadhu robes and prayer beads. Right away he’d suggested they find somewhere more suitable.
He took her out for South Indian food—paper dosas and idli sambar—and showed her how to eat the food, tearing bits off with her right hand, keeping her left hand neatly tucked out of sight.
She’d babbled on quite a bit in that flat American accent, but it didn’t bother Arun. Melita was charming, really. Her blond hair, the way her clothing showed the lines of her body, her flushed face and bright eyes. He could’ve listened to her all night as she rambled on about her family, her friends at home, what she wanted to do with her life (graphic design, or maybe be an entertainment lawyer) and where she planned to travel next in India (to Udaipur, then the Taj Mahal, then Kajuraho).
After they ate, Melita announced she wanted bhang lassi, so Arun took her to the best place he knew to get one. He ordered a small one for himself, but she didn’t seem to know—or care—the strength of the yogurt drink, so she asked for a large. When they came, bright green from the marijuana, Melita drank hers in huge gulps.
Maybe he should’ve known then, but he didn’t. Even when she was staggering, swaying from the restaurant, and when he had to practically carry her back to her hotel, he didn’t know. Not really until she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips brazenly against his.
At first he kissed her back—they were in the shadows of the courtyard—but then she pushed her hands under his shirt and giggled into his neck
“C’mon.”
“Where to?”
”My room.”
“But your friends?”
“Oh, they don’t care.”
He unwound her arms, separating her body from his, and guided her up the stairs.
“Don’t be such a party-pooper,” she bleated, but he didn’t want to be any more of an entry in her travel diary than need be.
(image from www.digitalrailroad.net)
The road to Jodhpur, Day 8
Ami balanced her sunglasses on her nose and peered at her guidebook as she ate an over-priced paratha at a rest-stop. She’d wanted to think that a night in the desert, waking with grit in her hair and teeth and the warm, fetid smell of camel seeped into her clothing would have changed her, but she felt her same old self rising to the surface.
It had only been two days since she’d woken cold and desperately longing for something resembling an English breakfast. Instead, they’d had dhal, rice and strong black tea sweetened with enough sugar to turn all of her teeth to black nubs.
She thought her butt would hurt for ever, after the long ride back to the jeeps, and then the jarring drive to Jaisalmer. And Dev hadn’t been there to complain to, not that she would’ve discussed her aching ass with him.
But by the time she’d had a nap and a lukewarm bath, she was ready to pursue the market some more.
Late in the day, as she was navigating her way around a herd of sluggish cows, a serge of people flowed into the market, blocking the way back toward the hotel. There was nothing to do but stand back and let them pass, and then the borage of motor scooters carrying three of four men a piece, and the then flat-bed trucks blaring Hindi-pop from massive speakers held in place by a horde of boys.
“What’s going on?” Ami shouted to a woman standing next to her, but the woman only looked at her blankly and turned away.
“Wedding,” came a voice at her other side. “Lots of weddings in January.”
She turned to find an Australian backpacker.
“Here comes the groom now,” he pointed to a man outfitted in layers of red and gold, riding a white horse. “The wedding must be over—now everyone parties in the streets.”
Boys with hands full of crackers lit the noise makers off, sending Ami running for some sort of safety, but there was none. Just the sea of bodies, the sway of the crowd and the flow of the party that carried her along with it.
She saw the Australian for another moment, waving cheerily from the sidelines, and then she was swept along into the heart of the market where people danced and shouted in no particular correlation to the several different songs being blasted from a variety of trucks.
Nibbling her paratha, Ami felt that sliver of an adventure slip away. She was just another tourist, pale, pampered, clueless, sitting on a folding chair in a manicured garden. A scrawny peahen strutted through, and the Japanese group two tables away snapped photos. Where was her meeting with Bobbi, or the sunset from Sunil’s roof, or the chaos of the wedding threatening to drag her into its undertow? Where was the heat and then the surprise chill of the desert, the sway of Babaloo, the chatter of Ahmed and the other camel drivers?
All gone, drifting away from her, like a dream lost to waking, like a prayer caught on a breeze and scattered by the brightly flapping plastic flags lining the rest-stop driveway.
(image from www.hat.net)
Interlude
It is said that Ganesh was formed by his mother with no help from his father at all. Except that had it not been for the father’s interference, there would have been no Ganesh, at least not in the way he came to be known. So creation worked through the mother and fate through the father.
It happened this way: Pavarti was left alone more often than not, and to amuse herself she decided to make a child. With her husband Shiva absent, off attending to Godly duties, the woman entertained herself by modeling the form of a boy from mud mixed with her own sweat. When her son was complete, she set him immediately to work—guarding the door to her bath.
Just as Pavarti was scrubbing the soil out from under her nails, Shiva returned home only to find a strange young male lurking around his wife’s chambers. Instead of asking questions, he flew into a rage and chopped the boy’s head off.
Pavarti, of course, was beside herself, pointing out that her husband had just killed her own child. The only way that Shiva could console his wife was to undo his error. So, the chastised husband went off in search of a new head to replace the one he’d severed. The trick was, that the head had to come from a creature facing North—the most auspicious direction. It took him some time, but he finally found a north-facing elephant and beheaded the beast.
Back at home, Shiva attached the head to the body of the fallen boy and breathed life into the creature, who was Ganesh. And, to patch things up with Pavarti, the god agreed to claim the child as his own, and to make Ganesh first in all prayers.
So it is, to this day, that the name of Ganesh is uttered always at the beginning.
(image of the Ganesh shrine from www.mickcanning.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment