If there were water. Part 1

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

~T.S. Eliot,

The Waste Land

I

All I wanted was to be in Bombay. I dreamt constantly of that city as I had last seen it, at the tail end of the monsoon. Meanwhile, we were leaving Udaipur to travel further into obscurity.

            Francis and I travelled second class on the train, something we had not done in a long time. The train started at Udaipur; we had been fortunate to procure a luggage rack as a seat, and we stayed there the whole journey while below us the cabin gradually filled up. I had optimistically estimated the journey at about two hours- it took six, naturally. By the time we arrived the train was intensely crowded; there was no space to put one’s foot down amongst the passengers who sat stoically on the floor, their faces hardened against the night journey ahead of them. We had foolishly stowed the guitar under one of the seats; the people sitting on the floor could barely move enough to allow us to get it out. The press of the train carriage finally released us onto the platform, and we gratefully breathed the fresh night air. It was nearly midnight.

It was a tiny country station, without even a waiting room or kiosk. It was not yet Winter, but the night was chilly. I pulled my jacket on and lit a much-needed cigarette. I passed the packet to Francis before he could ask. The train did not halt long at the station; it was already moving as we lit our cigarettes. Very quickly it seemed to disappear; the rhythmic thartharaana of its progress on the tracks faded and left the night in silence. The engine of a rickshaw outside the station started, then it, too, faded away. For a few minutes we stood there on the strange platform, unattached, nonexistent; then, rousing ourselves, we got into a rickshaw and drove into town.

Later, in the room we had booked at a guest house, we sat by the window and smoked, looking down at the sleeping town. We tried to learn what we could from the street below us. A dog started up barking; he was met with cries from scores of dogs several streets away. Francis and I both felt too tired to sleep. Eventually, though, we lay down, and sleep as it overtook us resembled the rocking motion of the train.

In the morning I got up and went for a walk. I was curious to see the town in daylight. Francis was still asleep when I left. I wandered up our street. Stores were rolling up their shutters. The buildings were of yellow stone: a desert town, the colour of the desert. The road, too, was coated in a dust the same colour as the buildings. Blue-grey water trickled through the open sewer that bordered the road, and hairy black pigs played gracelessly in it.

I wandered up this street until I came to the huge gate of the original fortified city. Iron doors as tall as a two-storey house stood now forever open, each one covered in spikes a foot long. Here the path opened into a wide intersection, on the other side of which the road continued. I walked a little further. I could see a market ahead, but the sun was beginning to grow hot; I headed back, determining to find some tea to dissipate the weariness that encompassed me.

It was on my way back that I saw the ghost. Directly outside the city gate was an empty lot, in which cows ruminated and the little hairy pigs rummaged. Here he stood, near the edge of the road. If I had never seen him again, his image would have stayed with me clear as a photograph. He appeared to be looking right at me. I was shaken by his gaze, which seemed to see me and not see me. I know no description for the expression in his eyes; it seemed to live somewhere outside the normal polarities of emotion, neither bewildered nor sad nor happy; without the slightest heat of anger but nonetheless intense.

My first glance told me he was young. However, after a moment I became less sure; his face seemed to hold the characteristics of both youth and age. Full, feminine lips, ever slightly apart, sat between round cheeks; several inches of curly hair grew wildly on his head. There was not a blemish on his skin; his cheeks were perfectly smooth.  He was dressed in a heavy khaki shirt, the cuffs buttoned at his wrists, and canvas trousers that had once been cream-coloured. His trousers were tucked into a  pair of hiking boots. His clothes all appeared much too large for him, they were curiously bulky. The heat of the day apparently did not bother him.  He, like the town, seemed to be coated in a film of dust, though it was not on him yellow but a pallid grey. His clothing, his hands, and most strikingly his face and hair were hid behind this shade of grey that dulled all definition, made him faint as an apparition. He might have risen from a funeral pyre and been unable to rid himself of the ash. He looked in my direction as I passed, but I knew not if he saw me.

Just inside the city gate was a chai stand. It had a thatched awning in whose shade one could sit on a narrow wooden bench, with one’s back against the old wall of the town. The shadow of the wall and the awning kept the shop dark, but the kerosene stove kept it hot. It was tended by an elderly man; ‘Chai?’ he asked me as I approached. ‘Haan,’ I replied, tilting my head in assent. He turned the flame up on the stove, which began to roar, and stirred the pot until tea bubbled furiously to the top. Then he deftly strained the tea into a small, tapered glass which he handed to me. The first sip began to revive me; I drank and watched the chai wallah, who had seated himself on the wooden bench. His face was darkened nearly to black by years of sun exposure. He had very dark, very shiny eyes that were full of feeling; the only feature capable of expression in his weather-stiffened face, they more than sufficed to convey his gentle friendliness.

I brought chai packing back for Francis.

‘Hey,’ he groaned, rolling over in bed, smiling.

‘Hey babe.’

‘You went out?’

‘Yeah. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t go far though; it’s fucking hot out there. I saw a couple of medical stores just outside; I didn’t ask about Tramadol though.’

‘True. Do they look… lenient?’

‘Yeah. I mean, they’re pretty rundown. You can’t always tell though.’

‘Yeah, you can’t. Thanks for the chai.’

I lay down beside Francis and tried to draw him towards me. He lay a loving arm across my back but stayed where he was. ‘I don’t really feel like it,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

I shrugged. ‘Can we watch TV?’

‘Course.’

The room got cable. I watched The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His guest was Christopher Lloyd, who played the scientist in Back to the Future. Francis and I lay around most of the day. I tried to have a siesta, but sleep wouldn’t come. We grew hungry, but we waited until late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated, to go out. The chemist sold us Tramadol- we both popped several, and wandered along the same route I had taken that morning.

The ashen man was where he had been earlier, outside the gate. He was pacing slowly, and seemingly preoccupied. He looked up as we passed. I met his gaze and held it, fascinated, as long as I could. Again I had the impression that he both saw and did not see me. Something deep inside me turned over in terror.

When he was behind us, Francis said, ‘That was so strange.’

‘What? That…?’

‘That guy, yeah. It was like he wasn’t real. He didn’t seem like he was real.’ I nodded energetically, excited to hear Francis echo my own thoughts. I told him about seeing the man that morning. Finally it occurred to me; ‘He’s a ghost!’ I exclaimed.

‘Yes! He’s a fucking ghost, you got it! Shit, Bell.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I know, Bell.’

We walked into the market but found nowhere to get a meal. We ended up eating at the guest house, discussing the ghost. The  food took a long time but it tasted okay. Back in the room, we lay in bed and smoked cigarettes while we watched a movie about a hold-up on a train that wason TV. We didn’t speak much.

That night I dreamt we were in a village. A group of thatched huts formed a circle around the place where we sat in the dust. Beyond the huts empty plains continued to the horizon. The weeping strains of folk music came to us from afar; the voices of women and of a traditional violin-like instrument; they all cried. An old man handed me milk in a steel cup. He said something to me which I didn’t understand. Then he lifted his shirt and showed me a bloody, badly mangled gash in his belly. The women wailed louder in the distance- were they grieving for somebody? The man was anxiously pointing at his wound.

I woke up. Francis was fast asleep beside me. I knew I would not sleep for a long time then. I lay there listening to the dogs barking. Finally, near dawn, sleep overcame my uneasiness.

*

At the tea shop, two men were debating excitedly. Their gestures filled the tiny space in the shop; their glasses of chai sat undrunk beside the stove. My own Hindi served me only far enough to gather that their debate was theological. The old chai wallah followed them with quiet interest, nodding at certain points, occasionally adding a few words. The two men listened to him with as much interest as they did each other and replied fervently. It was already hot; Francis and I had slept late. The chai wallah greeted us as friends. ‘Chai?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Do?’

‘Haan, haan!’

The friends inside the tea shop made space on the bench and bade us sit down. They seemed to be reaching a consensus in their debate. They had lowered their voices and regained their tea. One of the two was calmly expostulating what appeared to be his concluding point; the other listened, often mumbling, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ with a deferential tilt of the head. Chai wallah, too, seemed to agree.

‘What we are saying,’ the same man said in English, turning to Francis and me, ‘Is, if God does not want us to drink alcohol or eat non-veg, then why would he put these  things here before us? If they are here, they must be part of God, He is knowing these things are there, and he wants us to experience the world, the whole world. He himself has made  these things.’

‘Yeah man,’ said Francis, ‘You’re right.’

After tea, we wandered into the market. The ghost was in the empty lot, standing amongst the  pigs and cows. He wore the same heavy, faded clothes as the day before. This time he did not look at us. We bought samosa and fruit and cigarettes.

‘Francey,’ I said, catching his hand as we wandered away from the paan stall, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

We booked an overnight bus back to Udaipur for the following night. From there I swore I would go to Bombay, though Francis refused to commit to any plans. ‘Let’s just see,’ he insisted. I didn’t need to see, I knew. Bombay was a thousand kilometres and worlds away. I thought then it was the hiding place of happiness; there in the desert, I thought of the ocean and glimpsed relief. Our travels arranged, Francis and I got a rickshaw to take us to a wine shop and bought a bottle of cheap whiskey. We drank the whole thing in our room, fucked with the cricket on the telly in the background and fell asleep by eleven.

On our last day in that town, the ghost was at the chai stand. He stood out the front of it, pacing languidly, nodding his head back and forth. Some intense question was on his sweet, pouting lips; he was lost in thought. He wore the same ill-fitting clothing. I watched him, fascinated, watched his young face aged by that pervasive grey pallor; his hair was grey; it aged him a thousand years. The chai wallah was unfazed by the presence of the ghost. Finally he said to me, ‘Vo mera beta hai. Vo paagal ho gaya.’

All at once I saw that the chai wallah   and the ashen young man had identical dark, shining eyes. I often have trouble comprehending what people say to me in Hindi, but the simplicity of the chai wallah’s words was such that I understood him word for word. He said, ‘He is my son. He went mad.’