As a boy I wandered far to see what lay over the horizon. At 21, in 1971, I disappeared up the highway, a deadbeat Vagabond. My parents weren't sure where I was except it probably had something to do with India, a fabulously mythic land I'd been obsessed with since imbibing The Jungle Book, Jungle Jim and Baden Powell's Boy Scouts, for I was a Cub.
Since then India has become my second home, though I've been many places, it is my favourite haunt. After the 2 year house-arrest of Covid the planes flew again in '22 and borders opened.
I took my chance and rushed into the wild blue yonder where adventure, love and mystery rained down upon me. Riding the shaman's winged horse, the Sufi's flying carpet, arriving in Rama's silver chariot, I rode upon a djinn's broad shoulders to the top of the Himalayas where jagged white crags hovered close enough to kiss the cool sweet air.
There is a primeval temple there to an unknown God, a nature spirit, awesome, containing the entire Universe. When you stand before it you can't ask for anything, it's not a wishing well, you just have to BE, and what will come will come, what you deserve. If you are cool, a cool life is yours.
I'm not religious, a militant atheist in fact, but I am still aware of the sacredness of conscious existence in a stupendous Universe. This temple is difficult to reach, sometimes snow blocks the road, or money is short or there is no transport available. Yet I try determined, if I make it there I can make it anywhere.
I have learned of my place in this crazy wonderful dream world, I am central to IT, as everybody is, and I carry IT with me wherever I go, I am the Temple and when I dance abandoned my ego craxks, the wall that cuts me off from the WHOLE, dissolves. Yes, I know this is cosmic claptrap but as a close friend has said to me, "Whatever gets you through the night, baby!"
As we marched across the ice I slipped and fell face first into a pool of melted snow and got drenched to the bone. When later my friends said it was auspicious to bathe in the freezing river I replied, "No thanks, I've already done it, fully clothed."
I flailed about in the slush and 7 Indians hurried over to rescue me from my debacle. I reverted to my Speedy Gonzales Mexican mouse alter ego and loudly squeaked, "Aye, Yay Yay! Aribba, arriba! Yow, yow, yow!"
My Indian rescuers each grabbed an arm and a leg and almost tore me in half as they dragged me from the water. One of them promptly announced he was a physiotherapist and asked if I needed medical attention. "Yes! My legs are broken! Achy wow wow! Work on them now!" He then asked me for my contact number. "Huh?"
In a fever I mumbled, "1538740063373621153859553168843276308876652913335869911..."I stopped to take a deep breath and he exclaimed, "But sir, surely that is too many numbers?" I wisecracked, "No! I've come along way to get here sweetheart, what do you expect?"
They all looked confused by my comic routine. Indians don't seem to get firanghi humour, they buy it as reality, the physio furiously rubbing my legs as if he were a miracle worker while I plonked down upon a mound of snow. I love Indians' naivitie, they are sweet and innocent like children. They can also be mean, venal and abusive as attested by a nasty incident that occurred further down the road.
Sorry to indulge in more superstitious nonsense but I'm a Libran, the balance, in the above incident the balance went up, but it didn't take long for it to come crashing down as I'm an unbalanced guy. One of my biggest problems is insomnia, especially when I'm on the road I go without sleep for a week. This winds me up BAD. I also get heat exhaustion easily in my old age, and in India it gets very hot, my brain gets turned into a fried egg.
Late in the afternoon, after a wondrous journey, me feeling smugly satisfied with my self, we were trundling along a narrow, dusty mountain road. Up ahead there had been a landslide and a road crew was trying to clear the rubble from the road while traffic banked up. In Indian traffic jams it's every man for himself and a few cars pushed into the narrow space available, confronted by a giant bus that bulldozed its way in from the opposite direction, blocking any further movement for everyone.
A scraggy little guy, head of the road gang, stood screaming and waving his arms about like a scarecrow. He was yelling for the cars to back up and allow the bus through. Twenty cars had to reverse as if conjoined, similar to a human centipede. I could stand the irrational arrangement no longer and jumped from the car, rushing up to the centre of the traffic mele.
I screamed for the bus to reverse and allow the huge crowd of cars to snake through. The scarecrow screamed at me to shut my chapati hole and leave the disentanglement to him. I shrieked at him to get a brain, it would be simpler to have the bus back up. He shrieked invective in return, two other guys ran over and gabbled insults that I understood to mean, "Fuck off!"
I cursed them all, particularly the bus driver, its passengers hanging from the windows and enjoying the spectacle, the usual firanghi (foriegner) flip out, after two years tourists were back, "Hallelujah!"
In the middle of the fracas, with guys tugging on my arms, the Scarecrow hissing in my face and me yowling, I suddenly stopped the show by shouting, " Matta chud! (Motherfucker.)" I had heard this word in a hundred Bollywood movies and, while it was a nasty insult, usually the audience laughed. They didn't laugh this time. The three amigos road crew attacked me and attempted to tear me to pieces, me caterwauling like a cat thrown on the barbie.
I stumbled back to the car with three irate trogladytes s hanging off me. I got into my seat with them tugging at the doors and implicating my driver in the ruckus, screaming at him as if it was all his fault. The Scarecrow reached into the car and pulled out the car keys, then stood in front of us gabbling into his phone, incriminating us, me, to some official bigwig.
I semi-shat my pants.
My driver yelled at me, "What did you do that for? Now he's calling the police!" Dread and horror, the Indian cops can be monstrous. I sneered, "Fuck 'em! He's full of shit. Go and get the keys!" My driver wimped out, "No." I growled a bit louder, " Go and get the keys! He's nobody." Again I got a wimpy, "No, I can't do it!" Now I shouted forceful enough to blow his eardrums out his arse, my eyes bulging, "Go and get the fucking keys!"
He scrambled from the car and begged, whined and apologised to the scraggy arsehole who was still jabbering into his phone, pointing at me and taking down our license number. Eventually, with much humiliating kowtowing he handed back the car keys and we relaxed. Disaster had been seemingly averted.
By this time the bus had passed us with its load of mountain peasants jeering. The cars in our lane had also passed through the logjam, we were the last to straggle through, much chagrined. My driver moaned, " Now the police will be waiting for us in Chamba!" "Bullshit!" I grumbled, "the cops are too lazy to deal with this nonsense."
Sure enough we shot through the grungy town of Chamba, rubbish and shit piled up on either side of the truck-stop road, with nary a cop in sight.
We cruised on further down the road, and, as always, the scales of my balance swung back up again. We passed a road crew's camp with its tarred tin huts. These road labourers lead a very harsh life along with their children. A boy of about 7 flagged us down and said to me through the open window, "Well, what have you got for us?" I had passed this way before and knew of the children's deprivation and longing for some small relief. Thus we had brought ten packets of butter biscuits to hand out.
As we got out of the car a crowd of kids appeared from nowhere and rushed us, near rioting. While I took photos my friend handed 3 biscuits to every kid reaching out for one. Soon the biscuits were gone and I noticed two little tykes at the back of the crowd with sad, disappointed faces as they were unable to push their way through the crowd. I went over to them and gave each a ten rupee note which will buy a heap of sweets or be proudly presented to their mothers.
As the cutest little fellow stared at his note in wonder an older and much bigger boy tried to take it from him but he rebuffed the bully with a deft shove and I realised he had already learned to take care of himself. It was Lord of the Flies in the High Himalayas.
I determined that the next time I came I would bring a whole carton of biscuits and each kid would get a packet. Maybe I'd even buy a load of cheap toys to hand out, they were plentiful in the town market.
We cruised off, I was satiated with satisfaction, happiness and purpose, a child's smile is the greatest gift one can receive on this planet. We settled back and I got lost in watching the passing world, the ups and downs, the winding road, the rolling hills, the setting sun.
This is not an exercise in "virtue signaling", it's what happened, the story I feel to tell. I've made it apparent that I can be a right little, flip out bastard at times, a mixture of angel and devil, like most. Still I find that the adventure of life is grand.
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