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My laptop screen had turned on me. The soft inviting light that had dutifully supplied endless hours of information and entertainment was now methodically burning through my eyes and leaving behind a sharp pain deep within my temples. Pushing away from the desk with a brisk shove of divorce, I rolled towards the middle of the office and came to a rest near the balcony door. I stood up and walked outside.
It was a still afternoon in Ahmedabad and the sandy backstreet of Sarvajal headquarters was nearly silent aside from the inescapable shuffling of life and happenings that permeated every niche of the city. Three children screamed excitedly amid the swings of a cricket bat and falling of a wicket; the raspy note of a scooter came and went; a fruit cart dealer down the road echoed his sales pitch to the neighborhood. I grasped the thick black railing with both hands and felt the pin-point spots of rust against the soft underbelly of my hand. Leaning forward and pushing my shoulder-blades together, I took a close-eyed inhale and pause before re-opening my eyes and seeing I was not alone.
A family of monkeys sat in a nearby tree quietly but in plain site, staring at me for a brief moment with eerie half-human scrutiny before continuing their snack of thin leaves and small white flowers. I froze and was obviously more concerned with their presence than they were with mine. The mother and father crouched calmly and observed the surroundings as their child crawled, climbed and explored without relent through the cross-hatch of thin tree branches. Their limbs were long and lanky, covered in grayish hair and ending with blackened hands and feet. Not standing more than two or three feet high, their heads were on a slow but constant swivel of scrutiny, their small black eyes nestled in the shallow circle of black hair that was their face.
Oddly similar to the monkeys I had seen in the Ahmedabad Zoo not one month ago, I observed them with curious caution for some time until noticing their friends...and their friend’s friends. On ledges, in other trees and on the stairs below they all sat and crawled and climbed - I was surrounded. About twelve monkeys in all, I suddenly felt gravely outnumbers and bizarrely out of place. At what seemed like calculated intervals, they would take turns looking at me between bites of leaf and acrobatic vaults of strength and agility. My grip had tightened on the railing and I could now feel the spots of rust beginning to push small uncomfortable indentations into my palms. They were small creatures, barely over 30 pounds with delicate limbs and wispy white hair, but I could see the unpredictability in their eyes and they could see the caution in mine.
But without reason or communication, the twelve monkeys turned into 10, and 10 into 6 until they were gone. Crawling into the bushes and trees they disappeared without show or display, leaving my balcony and its surroundings as silent as they found it. Comfort and ease slowly crept back into my stomach, and I could hear the sharp smack of another wicket. Scrapping my sandal along the clean concrete of the balcony, I pivoted around and made my way back into the office and towards the soft light and predictability of my computer screen.
I haven’t written in quite a while now, and I reluctantly believe it is from a lack of inspiration rather than a lack of time. Though the latter is an undeniable issue, it's no pardon for a 6-week pause by any stretch of the imagination.
Why? My new life here in Ahmedabad does not consist of the raw ingredients that make up peculiar stories and vivid memories. I am no longer pulled to my matte-black keyboard by a desire to relive and document through the process of writing, but rather feel a grinding subconscious push rooted in guilt and duty - exactly what drove me here today.
But don’t get me wrong, life in Ahmedabad has come with undeniable upgrades. My office no longer suffers from chronic power outages and the lurk of curious lizards. The unbearable heat that slowed my every step, movement and task has been exchanged for the bearable burden of humidity. And my crippling inability to communicate with the strangers around me has been replaced with the gift of broken, yet constructive conversations.
It is for these very reasons though, that my inspiration has escaped me. It’s hard to write a curious story about overindulgent dinners served by complacent waiters in cold rooms of conditioned air. I see no reason to document my latest trip to the mall and local superstore. And though my daily rides in auto rickshaws act as motivation to write a Will, they are no substitute for tandem bicycle rides down heat-waved highways or bus-top gallivanting across rural plains.
While I am writing this though, going through the fickle rolodex of my Ahmedabad memories, I can see the very basis of my apprehension being invalidated. For every luke-warm memory, there is a rich one right next to it that I would be remorseful to lose. I haven’t written about my impromptu ride atop an elephant during a mid-morning tea break at work, the streetlamp-lit basketball game in monsoon rains, or covert trips to the local bootlegger.
I better get writing.
About a week ago I saw myself for the first time in over 6-weeks.
I was on a marketing visit in the small desert town of Barbud with my loyal work companion and village chaperone, Deepak. We had walked into an unassuming barber shop for a few minutes to escape the anvil-like sun, and enjoy some freshly pressed sugar cane juice we had purchased from a nearby street vendor. The small parlor was empty, and we took a collective exhale as we stepped in and removed our gumchas, dragging our sandals with fatigued relief across the tiled floor. To our left the entire wall was mirrored, giving the reflection of counter tops littered with silent scissors, three tattered barber chairs, and two exhausted men.
I sat down on the cracked vinyl bench, elbows on knees, and quietly looked at myself. Unlike the port-holed images of hand-held shaving mirrors and blurry reflections I had seen in the milky windows of nighttime buses, I could now observe myself in candid clarity for the first time in almost two months - I had changed.
Though same in shape and proportion, my face was now worn with uneven hues of pink from the constant onslaught of salty sweat and desert dust. My eyes looked sunken and worn, tunneling out of my face with a fraction of the energy, optimism and aggressiveness to which I had grown accustomed over the years. And behind me was the backdrop of my new life in a foreign land - the walls were plastered with the angelic faces of fair-skinned models, and dotted with smooth cartoon images of Ganesh.
So I sat there sipping the murky waters of my sugar cane juice, shamelessly gawking at the foreign figure in the mirror. He was totally unfamiliar to me, and all I wanted to do was stare. I was now starting to see why everyone else did.
Tightening the endless straps and plastic buckles of my colossal backpack, I looked up at the blue-grey clouds of the evening sky with a fast heart and focused eyes as I stood alone and waited on the platform of the Jaipur train station. The ominous words of GDL’s hardcore Fellows, veterans of India for nearly a year, rang through my head.
“I always wanted to take General Class, but never had the balls to...”
“It’s like a cattle cart...”
”No, you really don’t want to take General Class...”
At the time they were all just interesting anecdotes about India’s rough underbelly told weeks ago over hot chai after a nighttime monsoon. But now that I had a General Class boarding pass in my pocket, and minutes to spare before the train arrived, these same words were eroding my trustworthy conviction layer by layer.
It wasn’t meant to be like this though, my current situation was far from planned. I intended on taking the train with a large group. We had planned to not take the cushier 1st, 2nd or 3rd Class cars, but rather gut it out the non-A/C Sleeper Class to Ahmedabad - a short 11 hour ride. This was, as I had been told, the “real India experience.”
However, after arriving at 2:06 PM to a ticket office that had closed at 2:00 PM, my options were concretely limited. With the entire train booked, my only chance of getting to Ahmedabad was to buy a ticket for the only class that didn’t need reservations - General Class. Accessible to the poorest of the poor train travelers for about $3, General Class was little more than wooden benches, metal-barred windows, and a few rusted fans for its passengers. Because there were no reserved seats nor limit to how many tickets could be sold, the option of sitting and not standing in General Class was a luxury and not a right. I had encountered the same practice countless times on brief New York subways and Boston buses, but transplanting this reality onto an 11-hour train ride across India seemed to color far outside the lines of logic with bright and bold crayons.
I heard the train approaching, and could now see the unblinking white orb on its nose.
The gentleman on my left and the two on my right stared at me for brief moments of interest, wondering why someone like my self was waiting to get onto the General Class car. I simply stared back at them and took a deep breath with pursed lips, conceding the absurdity of my situation. Behind me was a rusted cart on shaky wooden wagon wheels selling samosas, and I cold smell the thick masala. The train had now reached me, and I saw all the other classes slide by in a taunting blur - First Class...Second Class...Third Class....”
I was in my starting blocks and the pistol had been raised. The shuttle countdown had already reached a decisive “two.” The drum roll was reaching a thunderous bedlam.
The train stopped with a decisive howl and I did what my friends had advised me to do, all the I could do - push. In an instant, I was mashed together with all the strangers around me as we nudged and prodded against each other in a solid mass of panic and body odor. People edged in and out of the narrow train door all at the same time, sliding by each other with angled shoulders and furrowed brows. I, with my cumbersome backpack wasn’t so lucky, and had to resort to brut force as I shoved through the the door with unapologetic resolve.
Inside the train was no better as I was greeted with an abundance of stares and not a single vacant seat. Hands selling water and sweets shoved their way through the barred windows and into the compartment- “Pani! Pani!” - bare feet stuck out from second-level benches and into my face, the rusted fans attached to the ceiling blew warm air onto my neck. Standing about a foot taller than all the eyeballs fixed upon me, I felt like a chopstick standing among spoons and grabbed onto the ceiling rail as the train smoothly crept forward towards Ahmedabad.
After about 45 minutes, a nice muslim man ordered his friends to all move aside, allotting me a hospitable 7 inches of seat which I gratefully accepted with the slight nod of my head. I sat upright on the bench with my backpack between my legs and began to doze off as I came to terms with my situation.
I found myself surprisingly comfortable and looking forward to the down time when my phone rang from within my breast pocket. The whole train looked over as I fumbled with the zipper and pulled it out - it was my friend Tushar in the Sleeper Class compartment.
“Dude, we found a seat for you, get over here now.”
The conversation was curt but perfect, and when I felt the train stop a few minutes later I leapt into action and began pushing once again towards the door. I could see out the window that we had not stopped at a station, but rather in an empty field in the middle of nowhere. Seeing the opportunity though, I slid the door open and jumped out of the train. The drop was far and the impact was hard, but I quickly got my footing and ran alongside the train as my feet clawed for grip on the loose gravel ground beside the tracks. For a brief but resounding moment I realized the train could very easily just leave without me, but I quickly put the thought out of my head and continued running until I came to the door of the Sleeper Class and pulled myself aboard.
The sleeper car was dark and quiet, but when I saw my friend’s faces it felt like a ticker tape parade. The train was humid and my blue vinyl sleeper bench was sticky against my skin, but it was the best seven hours of sleep I will perhaps ever get.
The day had completely gotten the better of me, and I could feel it with every emptying exhale. Though over the past month I was quite proud of how I had taken in stride the gauntlet that is India, sometimes it all just got to me - the heat, the cows, the stares - and this was one of those days. Deepak and I had spent the day in the village of Barbad with a Sarvajal franchisee, and our bus was finally pulling up. Despite its crooked suspension, rusted sores and fractured windshield, it was the most beautiful bus I had seen in years. The day was finally over.
“Go to top?” Deepak managed to say with choppy English and a rising hand gesture.
“Yeah!” I immediately burst out, walking to the rear of the bus with fervent eyes and an awakened bounce in my step. I had always wanted to ride on top of the bus, and the idea of escaping the inevitable stares of the riders inside was welcome.
With my backpack on both shoulders and gumcha wrapped around my head, I made my way up the warm ladder and onto the shallow metal tray atop the crudely painted beast. After only one step forward it leapt to life with the pop of a clutch, causing my arms to shoot out to my sides for balance and my eyes to open wide with the precarious reality of the situation. As the bus climbed to 20, 30, 40 kilometers an hour, Deepak and I quickly made our way to the front and immediately sat down.
The metal roof was hot, hotter than I imagined, and the scalding rail on my right was hard to grasp for more than a few seconds at a time. I could feel the bus continue its romp through the gears - 40, 50, 60 kilometers an hour - and the wind grew exponentially as it washed against my front teeth that were now exposed in a full childlike grin.
Driving past rusted telephone poles, wild brown-green trees and tilled fields, the sky looked bluer as I inhaled gallons of fresh air through my nose. The wind flicked my gumcha onto my shoulders and ran through my hair and down my back replacing warm sweat with a cool blanket. Even though Deepak was sitting a few feet behind me, I felt like the only one atop that bus, or anywhere for that matter. It was just me enjoying something I would have never experienced otherwise.
The wind had washed away the heat, and the cows and the stares, replacing it all with the sense that India was a wonderfully raw place like no other.
The plan was to leave at 8:00 AM, so by IST standards (Indian Standard Time) we were perfectly punctual as we drove away only an hour late at 9:05. The Mahindra Jeep was our choice of transportation, and it fit the mood perfectly as we were 9 men ready to go into war. I couldn’t tell if it was the Jeep’s anachronistic suspension on the pitted roads of rural India, or merely the sheer energy coursing under our skin, but everyone bounced up and down, mile after mile, with wide eyes and fiery smiles. Using my broken Hindi and their broken English we joked back and forth about the impending melee, yelling over the hot wind and flexing our muscles from underneath thin cotton shirtsleeves. I hadn’t felt like this since Middle School.
DV though, was uncharacteristically quiet. He just sat in the front seat next to the driver, looking at the horizon, and not bouncing at all. It was a this point that I realized our seraphic leader was a lover, not a fighter.
After about an hour and a half we pulled off the rough road onto a rougher road that eventually led up to the franchisee’s house where he was keeping the machine. It was go time. DV got out of the car first and quickly signaled us to stay in the front yard with the simple extension of his hand. We obediently held our ground, and stood with crossed arms near a tree to which a blackened water-buffalo was chained and resting. As our brave teddy bear general walked up to the house and disappeared around the tall front gate, we were ready for anything - yelling, the sound of shattered glass, gun fire. Instead, five children walked out of the house carrying chairs, biscuits and cold lemonade for all of us. With perplexed reservation pasted across my face I took their gifts, but shot a crumpled look at Tushar to which he simply remarked:
“Indian hospitality. Gotta love it.”
So at that I sat in the beaten-wood chair, crossed my legs, and slowly ate biscuits and drank lemonade. And this is what it was like - for three and a half hours. We had prepared ourselves for battle, but were left only to fight the breezy heat of a Sunday afternoon.
And in the end, absent of commotion or theatrics, DV simply walked out and directed us back into the Jeep. Apparently after a long discussion, DV and the franchisee concluded the legality of the business contract would have to be further reviewed, after which they would speak again. The war was over, a shaky peace treaty was signed, and the soldiers were sent back to the barracks. I was totally baffled at the sequence of events, but felt myself dismiss it within moments - I was getting used to India.
Before heading back to GDL, the group decided to take a detour. There was a fort in the nearby mountains called Khitri that everyone wanted to see - I could do nothing but accept with blindsided anticipation.
45 minutes later we found ourselves at the base of the mountain, and promptly hired a second Jeep bold enough to take us up the 4 kilometer spaghetti-like road. Passing veiled women and the occasional goat, we made our way up the precarious incline and directly through the 500 year old metal-cloaked wooden gate of Khetri Fort. Built entirely around the perimeter of a cupped-crated in the mountain’s peak, the fort consisted of two castles and a marble temple, all connected by miles of fortress wall that were peppered with head-sized portals supplying blue-green views of sky and landscape to those who walked atop it.
With a hollowed clunk, I slammed the door of the white Jeep and immediately felt the absence - the absence of car horns, the lack of goat chatter, and the void of market-place yelling. They had all taken a sabbatical, and the group took full advantage of it as we leapt up hills of stone and mud into one of the castles. Though totally vacant, each of the countless rooms was mauled by ash-scribbled Devanagari graffiti and 500 years of wear and tear. Some of the rooms felt like arenas with jeweled ceilings and rocketing columns, while others were no larger than a walk-in closet with charred ceilings and rubbled walls. Our echoes of pioneering triumph bounced from room to room briefly filling them with adolescent-like energy, only to leave them empty again as we swiftly proceeded on.
After some time with the group, I decided to section off and explore by myself. Trekking through a maze of steps, rooms and low corridors, I came to a relatively unremarkable hallway with a relatively remarkable light at the end. After 15 short paces down the gravel and dust passageway, I was rewarded with a view that trumped anything I had seen in nearly 30 years. The view of what seemed a thousand miles halted my march, and totally overwhelmed all five of my senses. Green hills and white clouds were complimented by disarming wind and a blunt sense of awe. There were no coin operated telescopes, no commemorative plaques, no rails, no one - just the sound of my heavy sandals as I roaming the expansive terrace. Though I felt like a general, an emperor, a god gazing onto the land, I knew it was a land of which I had total ignorance and quite frankly still scared me.
Seeing that time had passed and the sun had begun its walk downstairs, I made my way to the white marble temple where the others had gone. It was a rule at the front gate that after removing your sandals, you washed your hands and feet in a communal fountain, eliminating the tarnish of the outside world. I obliged, and with damp feet and dripping hands I walked past a room of low-chanting Hari Krishna and into a larger open room where a group of thirty to forty people were congregating. Some sitting some standing, they had gathered around a single standing man wearing white cotton from head toe, his face wrapped so as only to reveal only the round oval of his worn but clean shaven face. DV was standing there patiently but with anticipation on his face, as the others in our group sat and watched. I sat next to Kamal.
“What is this Kamal?” I asked in hushed words of respect as I sat down.
“People ask that man questions. He knows the future” Kamal said with his thick Nepalese accent.
As DV was got closer and closer to the soothsayer, the chant of the Hari Krishna continued without stutter or misstep. It was odd seeing yet another side of DV that day - he was serious but content as he waited with a patience that I had never seen in him before. After about 20 minutes it was his turn, and he spoke softly to the covered man, leaning in with a slight crook of his rounded waist. DV’s gaze fixed softly on the figure as he laid out his soul and asked a question of great importance - I could see it in his eyes.
And just like that, it was done. DV walked away followed by the rest of us, like a mother goose and her goslings. Ambling down the decline towards our rusty white Jeep no one talked, and the crunching of old dirt was all that I could hear. I didn’t know if it was taboo, or just plain rude, but I had to inquire.
“What did you ask him DV?” I asked directly. He stopped, paused, and looked up at the sky for a brief moment.
“Vvvell - I asked heeem vhen we would get our machine back.”
I smiled and look at the ground.
“He said one month!” DV exclaimed with a proud, wet lisp before bursting into sandy laughter
The group laughed, and I laughed with them, perhaps louder than anyone else.
Once again, I had over eaten. In a lawless ten-fingered blur of roti, yogurt and paneer masala I had thrown caution to the wind for over an hour at my favorite local restaurant, Ridi Sidi. The sound of spoon scrapes along the bottom of silver serving dishes had finally died down, but thoughts of a potbellied homecoming in December were just starting to brew. Alim, Karthik, Ashini and I quickly paid our shares of the bill - 120 rupees each, about $2.60 - and took one final gulp of cold water before walking out the door into the humid night.
After a short 15 minute walk down the main road, through headlights and horn honks, we turned down the sand-doused concrete side road that eventually led to our GDL entrance. At the front door and under a single streetlight I saw Dharamveer standing there enjoying a large piece of papad, and looking at me with his usual cherubic grin. I stopped for a moment while the rest of the group made their way through the front door.
“Hellooooo. Goood even-en-ing” he playfully said in his sandpapered soprano voice full of its usual inflection and vigor. His English was actually quite good, but everything he said was infused with a slight lisp, and his own brand of accent.
Dharamveer, who we referred to simply as “DV”, was one of those people in life that when you asked someone if they knew him, they would acknowledge with a knowing smile, slow blink and pursed lips - he was a character. Of average height and a portly build, you could often find DV sauntering around our GDL complex with a satisfied smile on his often perspiring face, and if you asked him a 10 second question, you would often get a 10 minute parable in return. He worked with me on the Sarvajal pure-water business, and often had to deal with the late payments, fraud, and general shaky business practices of our franchisee network - a necessary evil of doing business in rural India.
“So - vaat are yoo doing tomorrow?” he asked, holding out a generous chunk of papad. I took it and had a small bite
“As of now, nothing DV. Why?” I already had a smirk on my face though, firstly - because I knew he had something up his sleeve, and secondly - just because I was talking to DV.
“Vvvell - I am going to Jhunjhunu City toom-ardow to take ourd filter machine back from an angry franchisee, and I need your help” His grin turned to a toothy smile as he punctuated “help” with a few decisive pats on his left bicep. I smiled back and looked at the ground in a brief moment of modesty. As I was about 8 inches taller and 60 pounds heavier than nearly everyone in the village, I was the default “muscle” of the group. In the past three weeks I had been called an “army man”, a “movie hero”, and been told with sincere adulation but unintended homosexual undertones that “I want to have a body like yours, sir.” The comments were flattering, but I had never become totally comfortable with them.
Regardless, though being a bona-fide “Repo Man” for the company wasn’t in the job description I received last May, there was no way I was going to let this one pass me by.
“Sure DV, I’m in. But is it going to be just you and me?” Thoughts of a Ben/DV repo team seemed to lack the sense of intimidation and security that I thought we needed.
“No no no. I am having eeeight guys from Sarvajal come” he said
“Ah, got it” I affirmed.
“But - I tooold them vee were going on a pik-nik so that they vould actually come.” He put his hand on my shoulder with a raspy belly-laugh that, in turn, made me break into a laugh and slight head-shake. I didn’t know which was odder, the foolishness of the whole thing, or that I was becoming increasingly used to such absurdity with each passing week in India. Regardless, I patted DV on the shoulder and retired to my bedroom for some good rest before the next day’s repo work.
[It’s late. Going to bed. To be continued....]
My laptop screen had turned on me. The soft inviting light that had dutifully supplied endless hours of information and entertainment was now methodically burning through my eyes and leaving behind a sharp pain deep within my temples. Pushing away from the desk with a brisk shove of divorce, I rolled towards the middle of the office and came to a rest near the balcony door. I stood up and walked outside. 
