India had been a shimmering beacon in Arthur’s life since childhood, the tales of Rudyard Kipling and the Boy Scouts, Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita, avatars and djiin, the myths, history and variegated cultures all enticed him towards the white light of its rainbow heart inexorably. The glittering jewels and fabulous artworks, the jungle pagans and joyful mystics, the life-enhancing wisdom and soul-freeing practices, the architectural and natural splendours made his blue-green eyes flash with the fantasy of riches and enlightenment, like the thousands of youth before him who’d once laboured to those shores under the British Raj and now were heaven bent on the hippie trail. With clear focus and determined endeavor he crossed continents, oceans, islands and peninsulas to alight at last upon his Promised Land.
Arriving in Madras Arthur instantly knew he’d crossed to another dimension by the dirt, the stench and the alien characters raising the dust in their rush. A leper huddled on a hand-cart was his introduction to the cruel reality of his mystical wonderland, a creature that seemed barely human, covered in a filthy rag, only the rotten, ulcerated limbs poking out, whining and wailing for alms in a most pathetic manner as a horrified Arthur hurried by. He was somewhat reassured of the spiritual marvels of India by a quick trip south to Mahabalipuram where he was enchanted by the sculptured cave-walls and ancient temple sinking into the sea, resonant of the architecture of his dreams. All India lay before him yet it was the Himalayan Mountains that had ever called to him upon the whispering wind and where he was determined to go, where he fantasised he’d find peace, knowledge and self-realization in some glacial cave with a Baba who could levitate on sunshine.
A delirious hippie bedazzled by fairy-tales of Siddartha, Mowgli and Alla’din, Arthur jumped on a train heading north to Delhi, unmindful of the fact that in early 1972 India was just mopping up a ghastly war with Pakistan over the independence of Bangladesh which had suffered three million dead and ten million refugees fleeing into India. Warplanes still streaked overhead as Arthur’s train laboured across a vast, desiccated landscape on an endless three-day journey, stopping at every one goat, timeless, dirt brown, desert town India had to offer.
His third-class carriage packed to the ceiling with peasants and their entire household goods, Arthur squeezed himself up onto the wire-mesh luggage rack attempting to be above it all. A stream of coal dust from the locomotive poured in through the windows and on the first day Arthur got a tiny cinder in his left eye and no matter how much he poked and prodded he couldn’t get it out. His eye twitched with spasms from the irritation, within hours it had swollen to the size of a tennis-ball and leaking great dollops of pus. Blinded and feverish Arthur thrashed about precariously in his wire basket, the peasants below him tut-tutting in sympathy but at a loss as to how to help the delirious stranger garbling gobbledy-gook at them. The train journey dragged infinitely on, and for three days and nights Arthur tried to tear his tortuous left eye out of his head, every jolt, shout, touch and smell exacerbating the pain and discomfort.
His whole head inflamed, he was finally disgorged at Old Delhi Railway Station, half-blind, maddened by the pain and lost on the face of the earth. Gesticulating wildly at his deformed eye, Arthur got a rickshaw man to peddle off into the urban jungle that was Delhi, traversing the whole city searching out the almost-mythic miracle of a hospital. Deposited at a grungy building on Delhi’s medieval outskirts, he staggered into the reception room crowded with the diseased and injured, and found it hard to attract any of the scurrying staff’s attention. He grabbed a Medico by his white-coat and pleaded for aid for his infected eye, but the man and his cronies laughed at him and pointed to a long line of ragged paupers that stretched out the door. They all had inflamed, purulent, bandaged eyes and they looked like they’d been waiting dejectedly for the Eye-Doctor for days. The Medico indicated for Arthur to get on the end of the queue.
He reasoned there had to be a private doctor somewhere and, rushing out of the hospital he feverishly demanded in sign-language for the rickshaw cyclist to take him somewhere better, more reliable. In confusion and alarm the poor fellow peddled furiously back into the maze of Old Delhi, up and down the bazaar, in and out of narrow streets, ancient fortress walls looming over them like something out of “The Thief of Baghdad”, finally delivering Arthur to a dingy shop-front in a dirty back-alley, indicating this was the Eye Specialist.
With the roller door up this concrete cubicle opened directly onto a sewer, with red Betal juice spat upon the walls to head height, and containing one rickety old wooden bench in front of one dilapidated table. In his desperation Arthur supposed all Indian medical facilities were similarly medieval and perhaps this was some well-tried, home-grown homeopathic cure. He waited in the desolate clinic for a twitching eternity keeping his one-good eye fixed on the rag-curtained backdoor that could’ve stood in for the gates Hell. Out of this creepy doorway suddenly issued a fat, Sikh man wearing a grubby white dhoti and a huge saffron turban embalming his bearded head and delicately bearing in front of him a small tray cluttered with sacred rusty-looking instruments. Without saying a word the cryptic quack dumped the tray on the table, picked up a small copper stick from the mess, dipped it in a pot of grimy, red paste and waved Arthur over, barely glancing at Arthur’s diseased face. Still praying for some miracle herbal cure and always robopathic for anything medical, Arthur let the turbaned witch-doctor pull down his left eye-lid and scoop the red muck into his inflamed eye. As a searing burn exploded in his brain, before he could even scream, the moron tugged at his right eye and slapped the noxious goo in there for good measure.
White lightning cracked across his very soul, both eyes became balls of flame and flashed heavenwards and, blinded behind curtains of fiery-red mist, Arthur staggered into the alley and collapsed upon the ever-attentive rickshaw wallah. Waving his arms hysterically he was again pedalled off into the wild black yonder, blind, crazed, burning like a funereal pyre and at the mercy of the elements.
He didn’t know where he was going, they cycled on and on through a labyrinth of congested streets, Arthur weeping red tears at his purgatory-like predicament. The rickshaw man pulled over into an empty lot full of shit and garbage and attempted to soothe Arthur’s destitute heart by massaging his shuddering back and thighs. Delirious, Arthur hardly registered the groping hands until they grappled onto his crotch, and before he knew it he had an erection and his scorched eyeballs were momentarily forgotten as he was masturbated with knowing hands. Orgasm flooded endorphins through his system and he slumped, drained and resigned, upon the rickshaw seat and allowed himself to be taken by the dust devils into the antiquated city.
He was delivered to a grungy three-storied wooden flophouse where he writhed in a fever all night in his low-rent room hoping the chili paste would burn the bugs out of his eyes by morning. No such luck, for while the right eye wept away the paste and returned to its clear-sighted blue-green beauty, the left eye was more swollen than ever. He was unravelling into the Indian gutter and his magical quest seemed like it was coming to an early, painful end. Desperate, he turned to his last resort, an address given him by his old friend Compassion to use if he were ever in trouble, the sanctuary of a farm in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, two hundred kilometres south of Delhi.
With puss streaming from his eye, he rushed by auto-rickshaw to the railway station. Maddened by the pain and impatient with all things Indian, he squabbled over the fare with the driver, convinced he was being taken advantage of. Unleashing the demon of his ire he stupidly yelled, “You black bastard, you’re cheating me!” The Sikh howled in anger and gave Arthur a great wallop across the face. A crowd quickly gathered around them, the driver telling everyone what Arthur had said and they all jumped in slapping and cursing him. Just when he thought he was about to be torn to pieces a dark knight in shining white khirta pushed through the crowd and pulled him by his arm to the safety of an alleyway,
“My dear fellow, what foolish thing is it that you are saying?”
“I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry, the pain in my eye is driving me mad, I have a friend in Bharatpur but I don’t know how to get there?”
“Oh poor boy, easy to see your eye is trouble, my heart is pain but you must take careful what are saying, we Indians are much sensitive about the colour our skin is showing. Come, I meet you with ticket office.”
Clucking sympathetically, the dear old man guided Arthur through the railway maelstrom to the ticket-counter, comforting him with the knowledge that there can be one good soul in any rampaging lynch-mob. After a scrum at the window, struggling against a crowd elbowing each other out the way, a grumpy clerk grudgingly gave him a non-reserved third-class ticket to the big nowhere.
In those days getting a seat on anything involved a veritable punch-up with the hordes of peasants who also needed to travel, and often he would just dive through the window of the oncoming, shunting train to get to an unreserved seat, once getting a vicious poke in the eye for his trouble from a fellow competitor who was also claiming the seat. But that was in the years to come, when he’d become a seasoned wanderer of the Indian byways, for the present his blindness would have to be overcome if he was to survive and carry on.
He battled his way down the jammed corridors of the train carriages, through the free-for-all of squabbling Indians and piles of luggage, and shoved himself upon a spare seat, collapsing in hope that he was on his way to salvation. Just as he was indulging in his moment of respite along came an old ogre with huge handlebar moustaches and medal-bedecked military uniform demanding that Arthur give up the seat as it was reserved for his eminence. The only space left was in the open doorway next to the reeking toilets and Arthur hunkered down there, a cloth tied over his suppurating eye. The Brigadier-General had piled his luggage to the ceiling, filling every available space in the carriageway, and crushing Arthur against the wall, almost into the shit-covered toilet. Looking up at the burly old soldier seated grandly where Arthur had fought so hard to take rest he complained, “It’s not fair to favour baggage over a human being, I’ve got nowhere to sit. How am I supposed to travel like this?”
At this the old rogue’s eyeballs popped and moustaches curled and he stormed upon him shouting, “Shut up, you British dog! You’re not running the show any more, this is my country now. I’m a Brigadier in the Indian army and I can do what I bloody well please!”
He then gave the unwelcome guest a thunderclap slap across the face. As Arthur spluttered in protest he was rudely shoved through the open door of the slowly moving train to land in a heap on the tracks, the reverse of the infamous story where an Indian babu was flung from the carriage by imperious British cads in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King”. He scrambled up in a daze with his backpack askew and, undefeated, chased the train and, after clambering aboard again, was allowed to faint on a foetid spot next to another shit-filled toilet.
Several hours later he snapped out of his daze, it was midnight and the train was chugging into Bharatpur. In a blind panic he leapt from the wrong side of the train straight into an open sewer that ran between the tracks, shit flying everywhere. He splashed his way through the mire and, covered in muck, staggered into the pitch-black town, howling dogs the only sign of life. He stumbled up and down the empty streets until he found a live Indian who directed him to the Tourist Bungalow, that splendid firanghis’ oasis which glimmered like an hallucination at every street corner. Up hills, round bends and down innumerable alleys he shambled on and on until at last the cream plaster munificence of a Tourist Bungalow shone from out of the dark.
He banged furiously upon the front entrance till he heard the sound of distant footsteps and the creak of the opening door. A young chowkidor peeped from the door-crack and took in the sight of Arthur, face like a leprous dacoit and clothes dripping shit, and immediately refused him entry, saying it was too late. Arthur begged him for ingress and pointing to his eye, explained his dire need for somewhere to rest the night as he was in a deathly fever.
Again the boy refused, catapulting Arthur into an emotional meltdown, he gave off a night-rending shriek and pointed a bony finger at the scarified lad, the one good eye spinning and flashing lightning. Communicating his meaning sharp as a wildcat’s claw, he cursed the chowkidor, “May you meet with this fate and go through the same torments that I have just undergone, eyes burnt out, brain aflame!”
Hair crackling, the boy’s eyes went bugaboo and jumped from his head like boiled eggs, and he slammed the door in Arthur’s face.
Arthur trundled into the unknown dark, regretting the negative use of his cultivated psycho-sexual energies, slashing out like a laser-sword, his distress having pushed him over the edge into reactionary stupidity. He’d been told there were several Tourist Bungalows in the town, and trying to calm down with the repeated mantra of AUM focusing his turbid mind, he carried on, stumbling through incandescent mist into the dark. Around a few more bends he came across the promised refuge, lights gleaming in every window and, thanking his guardian spirits, he was welcomed in with much solicitation and compassion. Never had clean cotton sheets felt so good, like some luxurious dream of better days, and he passed out, sleep wiping the irritation of his eye from the slate of his nagging mind.
In the morning his contact in Bharatpur was telephoned, an old soldier like the bastard on the train but this time more benevolent, and the Brigadier Ghasi Ram rushed over to lend him succour, driving him to the local hospital in his white Ambassador and connecting him immediately with the best doctor available. He was administered anti-biotic eye-drops and assured his eye would soon heal. All very quick and simple and indeed the eye did heal in three days, while Arthur recuperated on the Brigadier’s hobby farm blessing the wonders of modern medicine such as penicillin eye-drops. On that first morning of easy sunshine, Arthur looked in a mirror and compared his eyes. He contemplated how beautiful and perfectly designed was the healthy eye next to the diseased one and how lucky he was to have such luminous blue-green peepers, and he prayed he would recover his lost glories and that he never take them for granted again.
Brigadier Ghasi Ramji was a kind and generous host, and Arthur was waited upon hand and foot till he was healthy enough to participate in the idyllic Indian farm life. He went for walks in the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and was thrilled to have finally arrived in his long dreamed of jungle paradise. It was time for the Holi Festival and the Brigadier decided on a trip to the nearby town of Brindavan, birthplace of the Hindu Avatar, Lord Krishna, taking along a gang of influential Bharatpur Babus with them in his klunky Ambassador car. First stop was the ancient Temple to Krishna the town of Brindivan had built itself around, and inside the dark, granite edifice Arthur felt he was taken back three thousand years. As doves fluttered up into light beams shed from latticework windows in the Mandir’s gloomy heights, Hindu men flung themselves upon the flagstones in prostration while Brahmin priests threw buckets of colored water over them, everyone hollering with religious mania. It was otherworldly and the Ghasi Ram gang was amused by Arthur’s bewilderment.
They then proceeded out of town where they crossed the Jamuna River in a rowboat to plod across a desert of sand dunes till they came to a small compound surrounded by a stick-fence with a hut on stilts at its centre. There was a crowd of devotees waiting patiently in front of the hut and a gang of motley sadhus sitting to one side glaring malevolently at the proceedings. While Ghasi Ram and friends tussled amongst the crowd Arthur sat in meditation at the back, oblivious as to what it was all about. Soon a craggy little geriatric toddled out of the hut and sat upon a small, makeshift verandah, high above the excited throng. He had a spotted deerskin wrapped around his naked body which was a bundle of wrinkles and matted hair, and his every pronouncement was greeted with applause. Occasionally he would hand out a banana to a favoured supplicant, and then dangle his foot through a hole in the floor and the devotee would rush to kiss the master’s shrivelled toes. The gifted banana was handled like a sacred talisman and all the onlookers gasped in covetous envy at whoever had one.
Suddenly the old boy zeroed in on Arthur and called him down to the front. Ghasi Ram explained how this was the famous Devra Baba, reputed to be over two hundred years old and then he told the ancient one of Arthur’s desire to be a yogi. The shrivelled Baba cackled with mirth and called forth his gang of wild sadhus and had them demonstrate many advanced yogic positions, complicated contortions that Arthur could only aspire to. The sadhus looked like a bunch of freaks shanghaied from some mystic circus and Arthur was mildly horrified at the thought he might be asked to join them in their ash-covered, deadbeat, grunge-bunny lifestyle. Devra Baba then gave Arthur an orange, and on further probing of Arthur’s story, presented him with another orange, and another, constantly calling him back from the crowd, till he had seven of the golden spheres clutched in his arms, the crowd rumbling in admiration.
The old guy announced he was retiring and dangled his foot through the hole one last time, aiming it at Arthur’s face. Not wanting to insult anybody, and delighted with his seven oranges, Arthur shrugged and kissed the withered, brown foot, much to everyone’s approbation. On the return journey, Ghasi Ram’s gang eyeballed his oranges greedily and muttered about the luck of the white-man for they had got barely a banana between them. Their loud camaraderie had turned to quiet resentment causing Arthur to withhold his altruism and hang onto the whole seven oranges because that was the number he was born under. Raising the dust as they sped home in the cramped Ambassador Arthur thought that maybe luck was with him at long last.
The next day he got over his greed for the seven glamorous oranges and gave three of them away to a not-so-famous old Baba who lived in a crumbling temple deep in the bird sanctuary’s jungle. It so happened that Arthur went on to experience four wonderful years in the school of shitty shocks that is India, in the process achieving a Doctorate in survival and a Masters in surfing the wave of Chaos that broke about him. After a month of healthy living on the Rajasthani farm he again aimed for the Himalayan Mountains, starry eyed and woolly-minded, desirous of continuing his vision quest and retrieve his lost soul in fulfilment of his delusional destiny.