Their First Day in India
He jumped into the window seat, smiled and closed his eyes as the balmy evening breeze hit him square in the face. “Feel that?” he asked excitedly, “That’s India hitting you in the face. “ He took a deep breath, “aahhhh, breathe it in, that’s India in your lungs, we’re in India, and India is inside us, I can taste it. It’s all around us, smell that? It’s a fragrant blend of cowshit, bidis, chai, incense, urine and patchouli. It’s the sweet , the acrid, it’s the smell of budding life and rotting death, it’s the aroma of all mankind and of all creation and it enters your lungs and finds its way into your heart and permeates your very soul, it engulfs you, there’s no escaping it here, even for a moment… baby we are in India…. Whew!” he gasped, “we made it, wow… finally!”
The bus suddenly lurched and the spring in the cracked leather seat was stabbing him in the butt, but it didn’t matter.
The woman squeezed in next to them unwrapped a crying infant from her orange sari. The child was made up with eye shadow, rouge and blush and sported a purple bindi on its forehead; the squiggly red mark stretched down between the infant’s eyes.
Seeing this Anna remarked, “Oh how cute, all made up, like a little toy baby doll!”
As she saw Anna’s admiration the Indian woman suddenly shoved the infant into her arms, and began digging around in a large cloth bundle at her feet.
At that moment the bus lurched again and the child hiccuped, sending a stream of mustard colored vomit into Anna’s hair. “Ugh! She shrieked pushing the child back onto the lap of its mother.
“So now I can add the smell of kiddie puke to the aroma! Fuck India!” she shouted, “This sucks!”
Pablo, opened the water bottle from his shoulder bag, wet a corner of his tea shirt, and started wiping the vomit from Anna’s hair, she smacked his hand away, “Fukkoff!” she bitched, “I need a hot shower, and air conditioned room, some clean sheets and a bottle of Valium!” she whined, “That’s not asking too much is it? “
Pablo didn’t answer; he was already miles away, lost in the cacophony of the Hindi movie tunes blaring over the bus’s crackly speakers. Mesmerized by the scene he witnessed thru the smudged and cracked glass panel of the bus window. He was entranced by the blur of what passed; cows and rickshaws, women in bright fluorescent colored saris, crouched under naked light bulbs; shriveled tits nursing skinny babies with swollen bellies.
The teeming multitudes along the train tracks and highways of India, are drawn like moths, from the inkblack moonless Indian night, to the passing bright lights, thundering railways and trumpeting bullhorns of filthy beat up sad Tata busses belching black clouds of diesel into the greasy air of the sweltering subcontinent.
They finally got into their hotel. He could feel her watching him, seething, as he put a kettle on the burner in their room. He knew she was wondering what he whispered to the room boy conspiratorially upon checking in, and paid handsomely to get.
She sat in a chair across from him, turned a cold eye on him studying him critically. With a cocky half smile he vacantly met her gaze.
Her eyes were a pale crystal blue; cornflower blue like a flawless Sri Lankan sapphire. They matched her faded denim jacket perfectly, and thanks to the spliff she was smoking they lent a far away look, unable to hide an attractive vulnerability and warmth. On second look they also revealed the capacity to be focused and strong and a painfully icy and cold blue, if crossed, and as hot as the blue tips of the flame that lapped the bottom of the now bubbling teapot.
She always held his gaze a second longer than was necessary, it was unnerving, giving rise to wonder.
A knock on the door, and he opened it a crack, tipped the room boy and put the package carefully down on the table.
She watched him unpack the bottle from its brown paper bag, “Oh the joys of being out of a Muslim country. Legal alcohol! My man Ram delivered! Even if this is the best he could do. “
At the bottom of the bag was a small white envelope bearing the mark of a local pharmacy… He pitched the envelope at her landing it on her lap, “Always thinking of you darling”
She unwrapped the packet and swallowed 4 of the Valiums dry, not even bothering to wash them down with a sip of tea or the water; that would have taken too much time to dig out of Pablo’s shoulder bag, and she wasn’t having any of this lethal looking Indian, “Scotch”
“Thanks”, she managed to grunt, reluctantly… “
Eyeing him, still a little pissed off she started, “, You are a joker”, she said, “You just get by on mindless ass, and I’m even stupider for following a guy with no idea what the fuck he’s doing, just stumbling along surviving on his dumb luck.” She snarled, … “I don’t know which one of us is stupider, you for being you, or me for being with you” she mumbled, on her empty stomach the Valiums were already starting to kick in.
“I just try and live by the Tao,” he offered as an excuse. “, Cant always make my own Dharma” he smiled drawing on the spliff between his teeth as he twisted the cap off his bottle of Highlander scotch.
“Indian Whiskey?” she smirked, her voice full of acid, “that’s gotta be the worst imitation of Scotch on earth, and you call yourself a Buddhist? How can you drink that chemical shit?”
“Wellll”, he drawled, “I don’t call myself anything,” rapidly inhaling the fragrant Afghan. He drank deeply, and steamed out a sharp hiss from the bottom of his gut along with a thick cloud of smoke. “AAAAHHHHHHHHHH…….”
“All that stress, that scene back there at the border, and then at the station?” he knocked back another mouthful, “Its shit like that, makes the whiskey taste a lot better at the end of the day” Like Hemmingway said, “This is how we burn the fat off of our souls!”
“Look sweetheart,” he smiled, “Taoists believed in luck, the Buddha threw it all away in favor of cause and effect, and these days I’m more inclined to roll with cause and effect. Its that infinite ripple, And I don’t mean the wine!” he goofed, knowing that once again she hadn’t the slightest idea of what he was talking about, “Every action, causes a reaction sending off ripples of action and reaction across the universe; across space and time, each ripple causing another like a stone dropped into a pool of still water, the ripple dissipates across space over the eons, reaches the shore and starts it‘s reflected journey back.
Try as he might explaining the new philosophy he formulated on his last acid trip that afternoon in Greece, he knew he was getting nowhere.
All she could come up with as to a response to that was, “ Don’t call me sweeeetheaaart!”
By now she was starting to slur her words, her eyes were getting a little heavier lidded. She stretched her legs out in front of her, looked critically at her chipped painted toenails, stood up and slid out of her skirt; naked beneath as always. “I’m going to take a shower, she purred, “Want to join me?” In a second he forgot about his philosophical musings and was getting out of his dusty road clothes and following her to the bathroom hopping with one leg in his trousers one out.
She grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around before he could completely get out of his pants, his legs tied together he stumbled and caught himself on the edge of the sink. It started coming out of the wall sending a cold spray from the leaking pipe. He eased himself down to the cold porcelain tile of the floor. Before he could untangle himself from the knot of flimsy woven cotton of his drawstring pants, she was on top of him. Looking down at him thru half closed eyes she said sternly, “Now don’t go confusing love with sex… it will spoil both of them for you… “
“You fukking animal” he whispered,
“I’m not an animal” she countered… I’m a Buddhist”