Calcutta 1973
They lay there sweaty under a mosquito net in the wavering flicker of an oil lamp listening to the scratchy paws and shrieks of the rats as they scurried for the offerings.
Outside the fog was rolling in from the Hooghly River waterfront so thick it muffled the banter of the coolies as they loaded freight on old wooden boats. “I want to to go back”, she moaned softly. “Huh? What was that?” he nudged her, she stirred. “I want to go back!” she shouted faintly with the most strength she could muster up. “You don’t get it.” he said with a touch of resignation. “There is no back. Go back where? Go back how? Go back who? You think you are the same you who left? The road transformed us. We’re not the same people who started on this trip, who hopped in that car thoughtlessly back in Greece. Remember what you used to say, “the journey is the destination.” Do you realise that every step I’ve ever taken since I took my first step was a step in this direction. Every step that you’ve ever taken, your whole life, has led you to right here, and right now. This moment is the crossroads we share and that its all led up to this moment. Right here and right now.” He laughed a small laugh.
She smiled, “You idiot. You can say that about every second. So what?” He smiled, ”Well, there’s been a profound shift in perspective a different way of seeing the world, and ourselves and it is effecting everything, I can t stop going until I get there, whereverthefuck “there” is.
That road in Greece that connected us to each other is the same road that led us all the way here.” He ventured out from beneath the mosquito net and looked thru the blinds at the foggy waterfront. “This is really “the end of the road,” he laughed. We are as far East as the road can take us, and this is it, we can’t go further East than this by land , and we can’t go back. And the place this fukin road led us to is this place within ourselves and each other. Its where we are and become who we are and where we are at, and there is no going back to who we were, there’s no going back the way we came, at this point there is only further.
Part of me is afraid of what I might find when we get there, part of me doesn’t ever want to find t. I’m aware of the risks we have to take them. I’m not listening to you. I’m not listening to logic. I’m still listening to the road. It whispers to me sometimes, sometimes it fuckking screams! This trip has become a spiritual trip now. How couldn’t it? It’s transmutation, renaissance, rebirth; death to the old selves hopefully birth to the newer higher selves, only maybe now we’re just lost or still floating in the Bardo, but I can feel it, something big is gonna happen. Its gonna be great.
He sketched a map with his finger on the greasy mirror, it was Calcutta, Bangladesh, Assam, Nagaland, the Bay of Bengal, and Burma. “If we head north to Bangladesh it’s closed borders and further up thru the marshes of the Bay of Bengal where whatever roads once were vanish into swamps and endless mangrovesof western Burma where pigmies live in trees in fear of cannibals and up there the fine line between man and animal gets very blurry. Burma only allows tourists a 7 day visa, and restrict them to Rangoon and Pagan, we can’t get in even if we made it to the border. If a Border checkpoint even exists up there we would be turned back thrown in the slam or worse. I think at this point it’s almost closer to continue heading East until we hit Hawaii and California! We are gonna have to find a boat or a plane out of here. Then find a clean beach to rest up someplace, maybe Bali. And then see where we are.”
The thought of Bali roused her conjuring up images of clean endless beaches, lush tropical forests, magical temples and smiling spiritual natives. She smiled inwardly imagining the opium dens of Thailand and Malaysia along the way with delicious anticipation.
Always ready to chase another fantasy was easy when reality barely existed.
“And then see where we are?” She repeated, “So that’s your idea of a plan? Ill say it again,” she groaned, “I still don’t know who is the biggest fool. Is it you for being you? Or is it me for following you?”
“Hey, lighten up will you? The world is still our oyster, as they say.” “I fucking hate oysters” she replied.