The long, flat interstate platforms at Victoria Terminus train station stretched out to vanishing points beneath a metal heaven of rolling vaulted ceilings. The cherubs of that architectural sky were pigeons, so far overhead in their flutter from roost to roost that they were only faintly discernible; distant, celestial beings of flight, and white light. The great station-those who used it every day knew it as VT.-was justly famous for the splendour of its intricately detailed facades, towers, and exterior ornaments. But its most sublime beauty, it seemed to me, was found in its cathedral interiors. There, the limitations of function met the ambitions of art, as the timetable and the timeless commanded equal respect.
For a long hour I sat on and amid our pile of luggage at the street end of the northbound interstate platform. It was six o'clock in the evening, and the station was filled with people, luggage, bundles of goods, and an agricultural assortment of live and recently deceased animals.
Prabaker ran into the crowds milling between two stationary trains. It was the fifth time I'd watched him leave. And then, a few minutes later, for the fifth time, I watched him run back.
"For God's sake, sit down, Prabu."
"Can't be sitting, Lin."
"Well, let's get on the train, then."
"Can't be getting on also, Lin. It is not now the time for the getting on the train."
"So... when will it be the time for the getting on the train?"
"I think... a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long.
Listen! Listen!"
There was an announcement. It might've been in English. It was the kind of sound an angry drunk makes, amplified through the unique distortions of many ancient, cone-shaped speakers. As he listened to it, Prabaker's face moved from apprehension to anguish.
"Now! Now, Lin! Quickly! We must hurry! You must hurry!"
"Hang on, hang on. You've had me sitting here like a brass Buddha, for an hour. Now, all of a sudden, there's a big rush, and I have to hurry?"
"Yes, baba. No time for making Buddha-beg of pardons to the Holy One. You must make a big rush. He's coming! You must be ready.
He's coming!"
"Who's coming?"
Prabaker turned to look along the platform. The announcement, whatever it was, had galvanised the crowds of people, and they rushed at two stationary trains, hurling themselves and their bundles into the doors and windows. From the broiling tangle of bodies, one man emerged and walked towards us. He was a huge man, one of the biggest men I'd ever seen. He was two metres tall, well muscled, and had a long, thick beard that settled on his burly chest. He wore the Bombay train porter's uniform of cap, shirt, and shorts, in rough red-and-khaki linen.
"Him!" Prabaker said, staring at the giant with admiration and dread. "You go with this man now, Lin."
Having long experience with foreigners, the porter took control of the situation. He reached out with both hands. I thought that he wanted to shake hands, so I extended my own in return. He brushed it aside with a look that left me in no doubt as to how repulsive he'd found the gesture. Then, putting his hands under my armpits, he lifted me up and dropped me out of the way to one side of the luggage.
It's a disconcerting, albeit exhilarating, experience, when you weigh 90 kilos yourself, to be lifted up so effortlessly by another man. I determined, there and then, to co-operate with the porter in so far as it was decently possible.
While the big man lifted my heavy back-pack onto his head and gathered up the rest of the bags, Prabaker put me at his back, and seized a handful of the man's red linen shirt.
"Here, Lin, take it a hold on this shirts," he instructed me.
"Hold it, and never let it go, this shirts. Tell me your deep and special promise. You will never let it go this shirts."
His expression was so unusually grave and earnest that I nodded in agreement, and took hold of the porter's shirt.
"No, say it also, Lin! Say the words-I will never let it go this shirts. Quickly!"
"Oh, for God's sake. All right-I will never let it go this shirts. Are you satisfied?"
"Goodbye, Lin," Prabaker shouted, running off into the mill and tumble of the crowd.
"What? What! Where are you going? Prabu! Prabu!"
"Okay! We go now!" the porter rumbled and roared in a voice that he'd found in a bear's cave, and cured in the barrel of a rusted cannon.
He walked off into the crowd, dragging me behind him and kicking outwards by raising his thick knees high with every step. Men scattered before him. When they didn't scatter, they were knocked aside.
Bellowing threats, insults, and curses, he thumped a path through the choking throng. Men fell and were pushed aside with every lift and thrust of his powerful legs. In the centre of the crowd, the din was so loud that I could feel it drumming on my skin.
People shouted and screamed as if they were the victims of a terrible disaster. Garbled, indecipherable announcements blared from the loudspeakers over our heads. Sirens, bells, and whistles wailed constantly.
We reached a carriage that was, like all the others, filled to its capacity with a solid wall of bodies in the doorway. It was a seemingly impenetrable human barrier of legs and backs and heads.
Astonished, and not a little ashamed, I clung to the porter as he hammered his way into the carriage with his indefatigable and irresistible knees.
His relentless forward progress stopped, at one point, in the centre of the carriage. I assumed that the density of the crowd had halted even that juggernaut of a man. I clung to the shirt, determined not to lose my grip on him when he started to move again. In all the furious noise of the cloying press of bodies, I became aware of one word, repeated in an insistent and tormented mantra: Sarr... Sarr... Sarr... Sarr... Sarr...
I realised, at last, that the voice was my own porter's. The word he was repeating with such distress was unrecognisable to me because I wasn't used to being addressed by it: Sir.
"Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!" he shouted.
I let go of his shirt and looked around to find Prabaker stretched to his full length along an entire bench seat. He'd fought his way ahead of us into the carriage to reserve a seat, and he was guarding it with his body. His feet were wrapped around the aisle armrest. His hands clasped the armrest at the window end. Half a dozen men had crammed themselves into that part of the carriage, and each tried with unstinting vigour and violence to remove him from the seat. They pulled his hair, punched his body, kicked him, and slapped at his face. He was helpless under the onslaught; but, when his eyes met mine, a triumphant smile shone through his grimaces of pain.
Incensed, I shoved the men out of the way, grabbing them by shirt collars, and hurling them aside with the strength that swarms into the arms of righteous anger. Prabaker swung his feet to the floor, and I sat down beside him. A brawl started at once for the remaining space on the seat. The porter dumped the luggage at our feet. His face and hair and shirt were wet with sweat. He gave Prabaker a nod, communicating his respect. It was fully equal, his glaring eyes left no doubt, to the derision he felt for me.
Then he shoved his way through the crowd, roaring insults all the way to the door.
"How much did you pay that guy?"
"Forty rupees, Lin."
Forty rupees. The man had battled his way into the carriage, with all of our luggage, for two American dollars.
"Forty rupees!"
"Yes, Lin," Prabaker sighed. "It is very expensive. But such good knees are very expensive. He has famous knees, that fellow. A lot of guides were making competition for his two knees. But I convinced him to help us, because I told him you were-I'm not sure how to say it in English-I told him you were not completely right on your head."
"Mentally retarded. You told him I was mentally retarded?"
"No, no," he frowned, considering the options. "I think that stupid is more of the correctly word."
"Let me get this straight-you told him I was stupid, and that's why he agreed to help us."
"Yes," he grinned. "But not just a little of stupid. I told him you were very, very, very, very, very-"
"All right. I get it."
"So the price was twenty rupees for each knees. And now we have it this good seat."
"Are you all right?" I asked, angry that he'd allowed himself to be hurt for my sake. "Yes, baba. A few bruises I will have on all my bodies, but nothing is broken."
"Well, what the hell did you think you were doing? I gave you money for the tickets. We couldVe sat down in first or second class, like civilised people. What are we doing back here?"
He looked at me, reproach and disappointment brimming in his large, soft-brown eyes. He pulled a small bundle of notes from his pockets, and handed it to me.
"This is the change from the tickets money. Anybody can buy first-class tickets, Lin. If you want to buy tickets in first class, you can be doing that all on yourself only. You don't need it a Bombay guide, to buy tickets in comfortable, empty carriages. But you need a very excellent Bombay guide, like me, like Prabaker Kishan Kharre, to get into this carriage at VT.
Station, and get a good seats, isn't it? This is my job."
"Of course it is," I softened, still angry with him because I still felt guilty. "But please, for the rest of this trip, don't get yourself beaten up, just so that I can have a goddamn seat, okay?"
He reflected for a moment with a frown of concentration, and then brightened again, his familiar smile refulgent in the dimly lit carriage.
"If it is absolutely must be a beating," he said, firmly and amiably negotiating the terms of his employment, "I will shout even more loudly, and you can rescue my bruises in the nicks of time. Are we a deal?"
"We are," I sighed, and the train suddenly lurched forward and began to grind its way out of the terminus.
In the instant that the train started on its journey, the gouging, biting, and brawling ceased completely and were replaced by a studied and genteel courtesy that persisted throughout the entire journey.
A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another.
At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows.
Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own.
The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where no- one had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less.
And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads.
The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose.
Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper.
However, when I surrendered my seat, for four hours of the journey, to an elderly man with a shock of white hair and spectacles as thick as the lenses on an army scout's binoculars, Prabaker was provoked to an indignant exasperation.
"So hard I fought with nice peoples for your seat, Lin. Now you give it up, like a spit of paan juices, and stand up in the passage, and on your legs, also."
"Come on, Prabu. He's an old guy. I can't let him stand while I sit."
"That is easy-only you don't look at that old fellow, Lin. If he is standing, don't look at him standing. That is his business only, that standing, and nothing for your seat."
"It's the way I am," I insisted, laughing self-consciously in the conversation he was directing across the whole carriage of interested fellow passengers.
"Such scratches and bruises I have it on my bodies, Lin," he whined, talking to me, but appealing to the curious gallery. He lifted his shirt and singlet to display what was indeed a rough scratch and gathering bruise. "For this old fellow to put the left-side buttocks on the seat, I have these many scratches and bruises. For his right-side buttocks, I have more bruises, on my other side also. For him to put his two-sides buttocks on the seat, I am all bruising and scratching on my bodies. This is a very shame, Lin. That is all I'm telling you. It is a very shame."
He'd drifted between English and Hindi until all of us knew the substance of his complaint. Every one of my fellow passengers looked at me with frowns or head-shakes of disapproval. The fiercest glance of reproof, of course, came from the elderly man for whom I'd surrendered my seat. He glared at me malevolently during the entire four hours. When at last he rose to leave, and I resumed my seat, he muttered such a vile curse that the other passengers sputtered into guffaws of laughter, and a couple of them commiserated with me by patting my shoulder and back.
Through the sleepy night, and into the rose-petal dawn, the train rattled on. I watched and listened, literally rubbing shoulders with the people of the interior towns and villages. And I learned more, during those fourteen constricted and largely silent hours in the crowded economy-class section, communicating without language, than I could've learned in a month of travelling first class.
No discovery pleased me more, on that first excursion from the city, than the full translation of the famous Indian head-wiggle. The weeks I'd spent in Bombay with Prabaker had taught me that the shaking or wiggling of the head from side to side-that most characteristic of Indian expressive gestures-was the equivalent of a forward nod of the head, meaning Yes. I'd also discerned the subtler senses of I agree with you, and Yes, I would like that.
What I learned, on the train, was that a universal message attached to the gesture, when it was used as a greeting, which made it uniquely useful.
Most of those who entered the open carriage greeted the other seated or standing men with a little wiggle of the head. The gesture always drew a reciprocal wag of the head from at least one, and sometimes several of the passengers. I watched it happen at station after station, knowing that the newcomers couldn't be indicating Yes, or I agree with you with the head-wiggle because nothing had been said, and there was no exchange other than the gesture itself. Gradually, I realised that the wiggle of the head was a signal to others that carried an amiable and disarming message: I'm a peaceful man. I don't mean any harm.
Moved by admiration and no small envy for the marvellous gesture, I resolved to try it myself. The train stopped at a small rural station. A stranger joined our group in the carriage. When our eyes met for the first time, I gave the little wiggle of my head, and a smile. The result was astounding. The man beamed a smile at me so huge that it was half the brilliance of Prabaker's own, and set to such energetic head waggling in return that I was, at first, a little alarmed. By journey's end, however, I'd had enough practice to perform the movement as casually as others in the carriage did, and to convey the gentle message of the gesture. It was the first truly Indian expression my body learned, and it was the beginning of a transformation that has ruled my life, in all the long years since that journey of crowded hearts.
We left the railway at Jalgaon, a regional centre that boasted wide streets of commerce and bustle. It was nine o'clock, and the morning rush was in rumble, roll, rattle, and swing. Raw materials-iron, glass, wood, textiles, and plastic-were being unloaded from the train as we left the station. A range of products, from pottery to clothing to hand-woven tatami mats, was arriving at the station for dispatch to the cities.
The aroma of fresh, highly spiced food stirred my appetite, but Prabaker urged me on to the bus terminal. In fact, the terminal was simply a vast open patch of rough ground that served as a staging area for dozens of long-distance coaches. We drifted from bus to bus for half an hour, carrying our bulky luggage. I couldn't read the Hindi and Marathi texts on the front and side of each bus.
Prabaker could read the signs, but still he felt it necessary to ask every driver about his destination.
"Doesn't it tell you where every bus is going, on the front of the bus?" I demanded, irritated by the delay.
"Yes, Lin. See, this one says Aurangabad, and that one says Ajanta, and that one says Chalisgao, and that one says-"
"Yeah, yeah. So... why do we have to ask every driver where he's going?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised by the question. "Because not every sign is a truly sign."
"What do you mean, not a truly sign?"
He stopped, putting down his share of the luggage, and offered me a smile of indulgent patience.
"Well, Lin, you see, some of those driving fellows are going to places that is nobody wants to go to. Little places, they are, with a few people only. So, they put a sign for a more popular place."
"You're telling me that they put a sign up saying they're going to a big town, where lots of people want to go, but they're really going somewhere else, where nobody wants to go?"
"That's right, Lin," he beamed.
"Why?"
"You see, because those people who come to them, to go to the popular place, well, maybe the driver can convince them to go to the not-popular place. It's for business, Lin. It's a business thing."
"That's crazy," I said, exasperated.
"You must have it a bit of sympathies for these fellows, Lin. If they put the truly sign on their bus, no-one will talk to them, in the whole day, and they will be very lonely."
"Oh, well, now I understand," I muttered, sarcastically. "We wouldn't want them to feel lonely."
"I know, Lin," Prabaker smiled. "You have a very good hearts in your bodies."
When at last we did board a bus, it seemed that ours was one of the popular destinations. The driver and his assistant interrogated the passengers, to determine precisely where each man or woman intended to set down, before allowing them to enter the bus.
Those travelling the furthest were then directed to fill the rear seats. The rapidly accumulating piles of luggage, children, and livestock filled the aisle to shoulder height, and eventually three passengers crowded into every seat designed for two.
Because I had an aisle seat, I was required to take my turn at passing various items, from bundles to babies, backwards over the loaded aisle. The young farmer who passed the first item to me hesitated for a moment, staring into my grey eyes. When I wiggled my head from side to side, and smiled, he grinned in return and handed the bundle to me. By the time the bus rolled out of the busy terminal, I was accepting smiles and head-wiggles from every man in sight, and waggling and wiggling at them in return.
The sign behind the driver's head, in large red letters in Marathi and English, said that the bus was strictly licensed to seat forty-eight passengers. No-one seemed concerned that we were seventy passengers, and two or three tons of cargo. The old Bedford bus swayed on its exhausted springs like a tugboat in a storm tide. Creaks and groans and squeaks issued from the top, sides, and floor of the bus, and the brakes squealed alarmingly with every application. Nevertheless, when the bus left the city limits, the driver managed to crank it up to eighty or ninety kilometres per hour. Given the narrow road, the precipitous fall on the low side, the frequent columns of people and animals that lined the high side, the titanic mass of our swaying ark of a bus, and the vertiginous hostility with which the driver negotiated every curve, the speed was sufficient to relieve me of the need to sleep or relax on the ride.
During the following three hours of that perilous acceleration, we rose to the peak of a ridge of mountains marking the edge of a vast plateau, known as the Deccan, and descended once more to fertile plains within the rim of the plateau. With prayers of gratitude, and a new appreciation for the fragile gift of life, we left that first bus at a small, dusty, deserted stop that was marked only by a tattered flag flapping from the branch of a slender tree. Within an hour a second bus stopped.
"Gora kaun hain?" the driver asked, when we climbed aboard the step. Who's the white guy?
"Maza mitra ahey," Prabaker answered with contrived nonchalance, trying in vain to disguise his pride. He's my friend.
The exchange was in Marathi, the language of Maharashtra State, which has Bombay as its capital. I didn't understand much of it then, but the same questions and answers were repeated so often during those village months that I learned most of the phrases, with some variations, by heart.
"What's he doing here?"
"He's visiting my family."
"Where's he from?"
"New Zealand," Prabaker replied.
"New Zealand?"
"Yes. New Zealand. In Europe."
"Plenty of money in New Zealand?"
"Yes, yes. Plenty. They're all rich, white people there."
"Does he speak Marathi?"
"No."
"Hindi?"
"No. Only English."
"Only English?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They don't speak Hindi in his country."
"They don't speak Hindi there?"
"No."
"No Marathi? No Hindi?"
"No. Only English."
"Holy Father! The poor fool."
"Yes."
"How old is he?"
"Thirty."
"He looks older."
"They all do. All the Europeans look older and angrier than they really are. It's a white thing."
"Is he married?"
"No."
"Not married? Thirty, and not married? What's wrong with him?"
"He's European. A lot of them get married only when they're old."
"That's crazy."
"Yes."
"What job does he do?"
"He's a teacher."
"A teacher is good."
"Yes."
"Does he have a mother and a father?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
"In his native place. New Zealand."
"Why isn't he with them?"
"He's travelling. He's looking at the whole world."
"Why?"
"Europeans do that. They work for a while, and then they travel around, lonely, for a while, with no family, until they get old, and then they get married, and become very serious."
"That's crazy."
"Yes."
"He must be lonely, without his mummy and his daddy, and with no wife and children."
"Yes. But the Europeans don't mind. They get a lot of practice being lonely."
"He has a big strong body."
"Yes."
"A very strong body."
"Yes."
"Make sure you feed him properly, and give him plenty of milk."
"Yes."
"Buffalo milk."
"Yes, yes."
"And make sure he doesn't learn any bad words. Don't teach him any swearing. There are plenty of arseholes and bastards around who will teach him the wrong sisterfucking words. Keep him away from motherfuckers like that."
"I will."
"And don't let anyone take advantage of him. He doesn't look too bright. Keep an eye on him." "He's brighter than he looks, but yes, I will look after him."
It troubled none of the other passengers on the bus that the conversation of several minutes had taken place before we could board the bus and move off. The driver and Prabaker had made sure to speak at a volume adequate to the task of including everyone in the bus. Indeed, once we were under way, the driver sought to include even those outside the bus in the novelty of the experience. Whenever he spied men and women strolling on the road, he sounded the horn to draw their attention, gesticulated with his thumb to indicate the foreigner in the rear of the bus, and slowed to a crawl, so that each pedestrian could examine me with satisfactory thoroughness.
With such democratic rationing of the astounding new attraction, the journey of one hour took closer to two, and we arrived at the dusty road to Sunder village in the late afternoon. The bus groaned and heaved away, leaving us in a silence so profound that the breeze against my ears was like a child's sleepy whisper.
We'd passed countless fields of maize and banana groves in the last hour of the bus ride, and then on foot we trudged along the dirt road between endless rows of millet plants. Almost fully grown, the plants were well over head-height, and in a few minutes of the walk we were deep within a thick-walled labyrinth.
The wide sky shrank to a small arc of blue, and the way ahead or behind us dissolved into curves of green and gold, like curtains drawn across the living stage of the world.
I'd been preoccupied for some time, nagged by something that it seemed I should've known or realised. The thought, half submerged, troubled me for the best part of an hour before it swam into the field of vision of my mind's eye. No telegraph poles. No power poles. For most of that hour I'd seen no sign of electric power--not even distant power lines.
"Is there electricity in your village?"
"Oh, no," Prabaker grinned.
"No electricity?"
"No. None."
There was silence, for a time, as I slowly turned off all the appliances I'd come to regard as essential. No electric light. No electric kettle. No television. No hi-fi. No radio. No music. I didn't even have a Walkman with me. How would I live without music? "What am I going to do without music?" I asked, aware of how pathetic I sounded, but unable to suppress the whine of disappointment in my voice.
"There will be music full, baba," he answered cheerfully. "I will sing. Everybody will sing. We will sing and sing and sing."
"Oh. Well. Now I feel all right."
"And you will sing, too, Lin."
"Don't count on it, Prabu."
"In the village, everybody sings," he said with sudden seriousness.
"U-huh."
"Yes. Everybody."
"Let's cross that bridge and chorus when we come to it. How much further is it to the village?"
"Oh, just a little bit almost not too very far. And you know, now we have water in our village also."
"What do you mean, now you have water?"
"What I mean is, there is one tap in the village now."
"One tap. For the whole village."
"Yes. And the water is coming out of it for one whole hour, at two o'clock in every afternoon."
"One whole hour per day..."
"Oh, yes. Well, on most days. Some days it is only coming for half an hour. Some days it is not coming out at all. Then we go back and scrape the green stuff off the top of the water in the well, and we are no problem for water. Ah! Look! Here is my father!"
Ahead of us, on the rambling and weedy path, was an ox-cart. The ox, a huge curve-horned beast, the colour of cafe latte, was shackled to a tall, basket-shaped cart mounted on two wooden, steel-rimmed wheels. The wheels were narrow but high, reaching to my shoulder. Smoking a beedie cigarette and sitting on the ox-bow yoke, his legs dangling free, was Prabaker's father.
Kishan Mango Kharre was a tiny man, shorter even than Prabaker, with very close-cropped grey hair, a short, grey moustache, and a prominent paunch on his otherwise slender frame. He wore the white cap, cotton kurtah shirt, and dhoti of the farmer caste.
The dhoti is technically described as a loincloth, but the term robs the garment of its serene and graceful elegance. It can be gathered up to become work shorts for labour in the fields, or loosened to become pantaloon-style trousers with the ankles free. The dhoti itself is always moving, and it follows the human contour in every act from running to sitting still. It captures every breeze at noon, and keeps out the dawn chill. It's modest and practical, yet flattering and attractive at the same time. Gandhi gave the dhoti prominence on his trips to Europe, in the struggle for Indian independence from England. With all due respect to the Mahatma, however, it's not until you live and work with India's farmers that you fully appreciate the gentle and ennobling beauty of that simple wrap of fabric.
Prabaker dropped his bags and ran forward. His father sprang from his seat on the yoke, and they embraced shyly. The older man's smile was the only smile I've ever seen that rivalled Prabaker's own. It was a vast smile, using the whole of the face, as if he'd been frozen in the middle of a belly laugh. When Prabaker turned to face me, beside his father, subjecting me to a double dose of the gigantic smile-the original, and its slightly grander genetic copy-the effect was so overwhelming that I found myself grinning helplessly in return.
"Lin, this is my father, Kishan Mango Kharre. And father, this is Mr. Lin. I am happy, too much happy, that you are meeting each other's good selves."
We shook hands, and stared into one another's eyes. Prabaker and his father had the same almost perfectly round face and the same upturned, button nose. However, where Prabaker's face was completely open, guileless, and unlined, his father's face was deeply wrinkled; and when he wasn't smiling, there was a weary shadow that closed over his eyes. It was as if he'd sealed shut some doors in himself, and stood guard over them, with his eyes alone. There was pride in his face, but he was sad, and tired, and worried. It took me a long time to realise that all farmers, everywhere, are just as tired, worried, proud, and sad: that the soil you turn and the seed you sow are all you really have, when you live and work the Earth. And sometimes, much too often, there's nothing more than that-the silent, secret, heartbreaking joy God puts into things that bloom and grow-to help you face the fear of hunger and the dread of evil.
"My father is a very success man," Prabaker beamed, proudly, his arm around the older man's shoulders. I spoke very little Marathi, and Kishan spoke no English, so Prabaker repeated everything in both languages. Hearing the phrase in his own language, Kishan lifted his shirt with a graceful, artless flourish, and patted at his hairy pot-belly.
His eyes glittered as he spoke to me, waggling his head all the while in what seemed to be an unnervingly seductive leer.
"What did he say?"
"He wants you to pat his tummies," Prabaker explained, grinning.
Kishan grinned as widely.
"I don't think so."
"Oh, yes, Lin. He wants you to pat his tummies."
"No."
"He really wants you to give it a pat," he persisted.
"Tell him I'm flattered, and I think it's a fine tummies. But tell him I think I'll pass, Prabu."
"Just give it a little pat, Lin."
"No," I said, more firmly.
Kishan's grin widened, and he raised his eyebrows several times, in encouragement. He still held the shirt up to his chest, exposing the round, hairy paunch.
"Go on, Lin. A few pats only. It won't bite you, my father's tummies."
Sometimes you have to surrender, Karla said, before you win. And she was right. Surrender is at the heart of the Indian experience. I gave in. Glancing around me, on the deserted track, I reached out and patted the warm and fuzzy belly.
Just then, of course, the tall green stalks of millet beside us on the path separated to reveal four dark brown faces. They were young men. They stared at us, their eyes wide with the kind of amazement that's afraid, appalled, and delighted at the same time.
Slowly, and with as much dignity as I could muster, I withdrew my hand from Kishan's stomach. He looked at me, and then at the others, with one eyebrow raised and the corners of his mouth drawn down into the smug smile of a police prosecutor, resting his case.
"I don't want to intrude on your dad's moment here, Prabu, but don't you think we should be getting along?"
"Challo!" Kishan announced, making a guess at the meaning of my words. _Let's _go!
As we loaded our gear and climbed into the back of the cart, Kishan took his seat on the yoke attached to the ox-bow, raised a long bamboo stick that had a nail driven into the end of it, and moved us off with a tremendous blow to the animal's haunches.
Responding to the violent blow, the ox gave a lurch forward, and then set off with ponderous, thudding slowness. Our steady but very sluggish progress caused me to wonder at the choice of that beast, above others, to perform the task. It seemed to me that the Indian ox, known as the bailie, was surely the slowest harness animal in the world. If I'd climbed down from the cart, and walked at a moderate pace, I would've doubled its speed. In fact, the people who'd stared at us through the millet plants were rushing ahead through the dense crops at the sides of the path to announce our arrival.
Every twenty to fifty metres or so, new faces appeared between the parted stalks of maize, corn, and millet. The expression on those faces was always the same-frank, stupefying, goggle-eyed amazement. If Prabaker and his father had captured a wild bear, and trained it to speak, the people couldn't have reacted with more gape-mouthed astonishment.
"The people are too happy," Prabaker laughed. "You are the first person from foreign to visit my village in twenty-one years. The last foreign fellow coming here was from Belgian. That was twenty-one years ago. All the people who are less than twenty-one years old have never seen a foreigner with their own eyes. That last fellow, that one from Belgian, he was a good man. But you are a very, very good man, Lin. The people will love you too much. You will be so happy here, you will be outside yourself.
You will see."
The people who stared at me from the groves and bushes at the side of the road seemed more anguished and threatened than happy.
In the hope of dispelling that trepidation, I began to practise my Indian head-wiggle. The reaction was immediate. The people smiled, laughed, wiggled their heads in return, and ran ahead, shouting to their neighbours about the entertaining spectacle that was plodding along the track towards them.
To ensure the unflagging progress of the ox, Kishan beat the animal fiercely and often. The stick rose and fell with a resounding smack at regular intervals of minutes. The rhythm of those heavy blows was punctuated by sharp jabs at the animal's flanks with the nail attached to the end of the stick. Each thrust penetrated the thick hide, and raised a little tuft of cream brown fur.
The ox didn't react to those assaults, other than to continue its lumbering, drag-footed advance along the path. Nevertheless, I suffered for the beast. Each blow and jab accumulated within my sympathy until it was more than I could bear.
"Prabu, do me a favour, please ask your father to stop hitting the animal."
"Stop... stop hitting!"
"Yeah. Ask him to stop hitting the ox, please."
"No, it is not possible, Lin," he replied, laughing.
The stick slammed into the broad back of the ox, and was followed by two quick jabs of the nail.
"I mean it, Prabu. Please ask him to stop."
"But, Lin..."
I flinched, as the stick came down again, and my expression pleaded with him to intervene.
Reluctantly, Prabaker passed on my request to his father. Kishan listened intently, and then laughed helplessly in a fit of giggles. After a time, he perceived his son's distress, however, and the laughter subsided, and finally died, in a flurry of questions. Prabaker did his best to answer them, but at last he turned his increasingly forlorn expression to me once more.
"My father, Lin, he wants to know why you want him to stop using the stick."
"I don't want him to hurt the ox."
This time Prabaker laughed, and when he was able to translate my words for his father, they both laughed. They talked for a while, still laughing, and then Prabaker addressed me again.
"My father is asking, is it true that in your country people are eating cows?"
"Well, yes, it's true. But..."
"How many of the cows do you eat there?"
"We... well... we export them from my country. We don't eat them all ourselves."
"How many?"
"Oh, hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe millions, if you count the sheep. But we use humane methods, and we don't believe in unnecessarily hurting them."
"My father is saying, he thinks it is very hard to _eat one of these big animals, without hurting it." He then sought to explain my nature to his father by recounting for him the story of how I'd given up my seat, on the train journey, to allow an elderly man to sit, how I shared my fruit and other food with my fellow passengers, and how I often gave to beggars on the streets of Bombay.
Kishan pulled the cart to a sudden stop, and jumped down from the wooden yoke. He fired a stream of commands at Prabaker, who finally turned to me to translate.
"My father wants to know if we have it any presents with us, from Bombay, for him and the family. I told him we did. Now he wants us to give it those presents to him here, and in this place, before we go any more along the road."
"He wants us to go through our bags, here, on this track?"
"Yes. He is afraid that when we get to Sunder village, you will have a good hearts, and give it away all those presents to other people, and he will not get his presents. He wants it all his presents now."
So we did. Under the indigo banner of early-evening sky, on the scratch of track between fields of undulant maize and millet, we spread out the colours of India, the yellows and reds and peacock blues of shirts and lungi wraps and saris. Then we repacked them, with fragrant soaps and sewing needles, incense and safety pins, perfume and shampoo and massage oils, so that one full bag contained only those things we'd brought for Prabaker's family.
With that bag safely tucked behind him on the rails of the ox- cart harness, Kishan Mango Kharre launched us on the last leg of our journey by striking the dumbly patient ox more often, and with a good deal more vigour, than he'd done before I tried to intercede on its behalf.
And then, at last, it was the voices of women and children, raised in laughter and cries of excitement, that welcomed us. The sounds reached us moments before we turned the last sharp curve and entered the village of Sunder along a single, wide street of swept, pressed, golden river sand. On either side were the houses, distributed so that no house faced into another across the street. The houses were round, made of pale brown mud, with round windows and curved doors. The roofs were made with little domes of thatched grasses.
Word had spread that the foreigner was arriving. The two hundred souls of Sunder village had been joined by hundreds more from neigh- bouring villages. Kishan drove us into the throng, stopping outside his own home. He was grinning so widely that everyone who looked at him was moved to laugh in return.
We climbed down from the cart, and stood with our luggage at our feet in the centre of six hundred stares and whispers. A breath- filled silence settled on the crowd, packed so tightly that each one pressed upon his neighbour. They were so close to me that I could feel the breath upon my face. Six hundred pairs of eyes fixed me with the intensity of their fascination. No-one spoke.
Prabaker was at my side, and although he smiled and enjoyed the celebrity that the moment gave him, he too was awed by the press of attention and the surrounding wall of wonderment and expectation.
"I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here," I said, in just the serious tone of voice that would've been funny if there'd been a single person in the crowd who understood the joke. No-one did, of course, and the silence thickened, as even the faint murmurs died away.
What do you say to a huge crowd of strangers who are waiting for you to say something, and who don't speak your language?
My backpack was at my feet. In the top flap pocket there was a souvenir that a friend had given me. It was a jester's cap, in black and white, complete with bells on the ends of its three cloth horns. The friend, an actor in New Zealand, had made the jester's cap as part of a costume. At the airport, with minutes to go before my flight to India, he'd given me the cap as a good luck charm, a remembrance of him, and I'd stuffed it into the top of my backpack.
There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.
I took the jester's cap out of the pack and put it on, pulling it tight under my chin, and straightening the cloth horns with my fingers. Everyone at the front of the crowd drew back with a little inrushing gasp of alarm. Then I smiled, and wiggled my head, ringing the bells.
"Hello, folks!" I said. "It's show time!"
The effect was electrifying. Everyone laughed. The entire group of women, children, and men erupted as one, laughing and joking and cry- ing out. One person reached out to touch me on the shoulder. The children at the front reached for my hands. Then everyone within grasping distance patted, stroked, and grabbed me. I caught Prabaker's eye. The look of joy and pride I found there was a kind of prayer.
He permitted the gentle assault for some minutes, and then asserted his authority over the new attraction by clearing the crowd away. He succeeded, at last, in opening the way to his father's house and, as we entered the dark circle of Kishan's home, the chattering, laughing crowd began to disperse.
"You must have a bath, Lin. After such a long travel you must be smelling unhappy. Come this way. My sisters have already heated the water on the fire. The pots are ready for your bath. Come."
We passed through a low arch, and he led me to an area beside the house that was enclosed on three sides by hanging tatami mats.
Flat river stones formed a shower base, and three large clay pots of warm water were arranged near them. A channel had been dug and smoothed out, allowing water to run off behind the house.
Prabaker told me that a small brass jug was to be used to tip water over my body, and gave me the soap dish.
I'd been unlacing my boots while he spoke, and I cast them aside, threw off my shirt, and pulled off my jeans.
"Lin!" Prabaker screamed in panic, leaping, in a single bound, across the two metres that separated us. He tried to cover my body with his hands, but then looked around in anguish to see that the towel was on my backpack, a further two metres away. He jumped for the towel, snatched it up, and jumped back, giving a little shout of panic-Yaaah!-each time. He wrapped the towel around me, and looked around in terror.
"Have you gone crazy, Lin? What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to... take a shower..."
"But like that? Like that?"
"What's the matter with you, Prabu? You told me to take a shower.
You brought me here to have a shower. So, I'm trying to take a shower, but you're jumping around like a rabbit. What's your problem?"
"You were naked, Lin! Naked, without any clothes also!"
"That's how I take a shower," I said, exasperated by his mysterious terror. He was darting about, peering through the tatami matting at various places. "That's how everyone takes a shower, isn't it?" "No! No! No, Lin!" he corrected, returning to face me. A desperate expression contorted his normally happy features.
"You don't take your clothes off?"
"No, Lin! This is India. Nobody can take his clothes off, not even to wash his bodies. This is India. Nobody is ever naked in India. And especially, nobody is naked without clothes."
"So... how do you take a shower?"
"We wear it the underpants, for having a bath in India."
"Well, that's fine," I said, dropping the towel to reveal my black jockey shorts. "I'm wearing underpants."
"Yaaah!" Prabaker screamed, diving for the towel and covering me again.
"Those teeny pieces, Lin? Those are not the underpants. Those are the under-underpants only. You must have it the over-underpants."
"The... over-underpants?"
"Yes. Certainly. Like these, my ones, that I am wearing."
He unbuttoned his own trousers enough to show me that he wore a pair of green shorts under his clothes.
"In India, the men are wearing this over-underpants, under their clothes, at all times, and in all the situations. Even if they are wearing under-underpants, still they are wearing over- underpants, over their unders. You see?"
"No."
"Well, just you wait here. I will get you some over-underpants for your bath. But don't remove your towel. Please! Promise! If the people see you without the towel, in such teeny pieces, they will be like a wild people. Wait here!"
He darted off, and after a few minutes returned with two pairs of red football shorts.
"Here, Lin," he puffed. "You are such a big fellow, I hope we can get a good fits. These are from Fat Satish. He is so fat, I think they might fit you. I told him a story, and then he gave it this two pairs for you. I told him that on the journey you had loose motions, and you made such a mess in your over-underpants that we had to throw them away."
"You told him," I asked, "that I shit my pants?"
"Oh, yes, Lin. I certainly couldn't tell him that you have no over-underpants!" "Well, of course not."
"I mean, what would he be thinking about you?"
"Thank you, Prabu," I muttered, through clenched teeth. If my tone had been any drier I wouldn't have needed a towel.
"That is my pleasure, Lin. I am your very good friend. So please, promise me that you will not be naked in India. Especially not without your clothes."
"I promise."
"I am so glad you make this promise, Lin. You are my very good friend, too, isn't it? Now I will take a bath also, like we are two brothers, and I will show you the Indian style."
So, we both took a shower, in the bathing area of his father's house. Watching him, and following his lead, I wet my body in a first rinse with two jugs of water from one of the large pots, and worked the soap beneath my shorts without ever taking them off. After the final rinse, and a quick dry off with the towel, he taught me how to tie a lungi around the wet shorts. The lungi was a sarong-like rectangle of cotton, worn from waist to ankle.
He gathered two long ends or corners of the lungi at the front, and then passed them around my waist, and rolled them under the top edge, in the small of my back. Within the encircling lungi, I removed and discarded my wet shorts and slipped on a dry pair of shorts underneath. With that technique, Prabaker assured me, I could take a shower in the open, and not offend his neighbours.
After the shower, and a delicious meal of dhal, rice, and homemade flatbreads, Prabaker and I watched as his parents and his two sisters opened their presents. We drank tea then, and for two hours we answered questions about me, and my home and family.
I tried to answer truthfully-without the crucial truth that in my hunted exile, I didn't think I would ever see my home or family again. At last, Prabaker announced that he was too tired to translate any more, and that I should be permitted to rest.
A bed made from the wood of coconut trees and with a stretched mattress, formed from a web of coconut-fibre rope, was set up for me in the open, outside Kishan's house. It was Kishan's own bed.
Prabaker told me that it might take two days to have a new one made to his father's satisfaction. Until then Kishan would sleep beside his son on the floor of the house, while I used his bed. I tried to resist, but my protests drowned in the sea of their gentle, relentless insistence. So I lay down on the poor farmer's bed, and my first night in that first Indian village ended, as it had begun, with surrender.
Prabaker told me that his family and his neighbours were concerned that I would be lonely, that I must be lonely, in a strange place, without my own family. They decided to sit with me on that first night, mounting a vigil in the dark until they were sure that I was peacefully deep in sleep. After all, the little guide remarked, people in my country, in my village, would do the same for him, if he went there and missed his family, wouldn't they?
They sat on the ground around my low bed, Prabaker and his parents and his neighbours, keeping me company in the warm, dark, cinnamon-scented night, and forming a ring of protection around me. I thought that it would be impossible to sleep within a circle of spectators, but in minutes I began to float and drift on the murmuring tide of their voices; soft and rhythmic waves that swirled beneath a fathomless night of bright, whispering stars.
At one point, Prabaker's father reached out from his place at my left side to rest his hand on my shoulder. It was a simple gesture of kindness and comfort, but its effect on me was profound. A moment before, I'd been drifting toward sleep.
Suddenly I was hard awake. I plunged into memories and thoughts of my daughter, my parents, my brother; of the crimes I'd committed, and the loves I'd betrayed and lost forever.
It may seem strange, and it may in fact be impossible for anyone else to understand, but until that very moment I'd had no real comprehension of the wrong I'd done, and the life I'd lost. While I'd committed the armed robberies, I was on drugs, addicted to heroin. An opiate fog had settled over everything that I thought and did and even remembered about that time. Afterwards, during the trial and the three years in prison, I was sober and clear- headed, and I should've known then what the crimes and punishments meant, for myself and my family and the people I'd robbed at the point of a gun. But I didn't know or feel anything of it then. I was too busy being punished, and feeling punished, to put my heart around it. Even with the escape from prison, and the flight, running and hiding as a wanted man, a hunted man with a price on my head-even then, there was no final, clear, encompassing grasp of the acts and the consequences that made up the new, bitter story of my life. It was only there, in the village in India, on that first night, adrift on the raft of murmuring voices, and my eyes filled with stars; only then, when another man's father reached out to comfort me, and placed a poor farmer's rough and calloused hand on my shoulder; only there and then did I see and feel the torment of what I'd done, and what I'd become-the pain and the fear and the waste; the stupid, unforgivable waste of it all. My heart broke on its shame and sorrow. I suddenly knew how much crying there was in me, and how little love. I knew, at last, how lonely I was.
But I couldn't respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever.
The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled.
I clenched my teeth against the stars. I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep. One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again.
Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.