Failed Dreams
"I am a hardcore workaholic underpaid asshole." I had retaliated when the chef had asked why I wanted to resign. I had erupted, the volcano inside me had finally taken over, anger like lava flowing in the form of words. I had burst out, was it anger or really frustration that had been brewing inside me or was it the way I had led my life. But one thing was certain, my career as a chef was finally over, I was tired of life and had been thinking of moving on but it was just a dream and this volcano had sealed my fate.
I wore my chef clothes for the last time ,no longer a chef I took the Virar express for the last time .People shook hands and went at the end of the queue ,the rules were never broken ,never bent ,never taken for granted ,I was a free man ,four years had gone by and now I was jobless ,workaholic not paid asshole ,Was I really free or was it something that I could not control ,was it destiny? Or was it my fate? Had I known at that time what was in store for me would I have left my job? Would I have had the courage to leave my job .I knew were to go next.
"Siddhartha, what are you thinking?" Vishal asked. It had been a long time ago .Jindu was being released next week .Swarnalata was happy .I had met Jindu a couple of times in the jail and he was pleased that his family was being taken care off .
"how is Swarnalata?" he had asked every time I had visited him never mentioning his daughter once .Maybe he felt guilty mentioning his daughter or he didn’t want to discuss this sensitive topic with an outsider .Maybe the wound were healed and I didn’t want to bring up this topic up and pain him more . I had told Jindu how things were, how after a stiff resistance from Ram Singh and his son we had finally been able to establish ourselves. How Swarnalata had stood the grounds of time emerging more powerful with each storm that had shackled Shiv Shakti guest house.
Time that had stood still once had now been racing, competing with the best steeds, winner invariably being time.
Looking back, it started to reappear once again ,I had not been able to make a decision that day ,the lift door opened and I had walked back ,said sorry and had gone back to work .I knew that I wouldn’t be able to walk out ,I was running ,the irony of life ,when you want something in life it eludes you ,I had started this journey in search of my soul ,my true aim ,and all that I had ever found was more pain ,more misery ,agony .Had that man died on the tracks that day ? Did the condition of those Devdasis improve while I was still in jail; had her husband got down of the train when the fall had killed her? The questions which had no answers.
Was all this supposed to happen this way, was my life wasted in search of that ever eluding goal. I had suffered and still was .I had read somewhere that every man has a guardian angel but it seemed that I was the fallen angel suffering from wrath of God, Life had skipped past and I was still standing waiting for that answer when all I had to do was to stay calm and think materialistic.
"How much?" I was back sitting on the counter doing accounts for the restaurant .A tired looking man stood in front of me, he seemed to be old, had sunken eyes but had a striking resemblance to some one whom I had known in the past .He smiled, I could never forget how Randy smiled .Randy stood there staring at me trying to make out who I was.
"How are you feeling today?" I asked
"Right side up baby right side up"he answered as tears rolled out of his eyes.
"How are you Siddhartha, after so many years …." He couldn’t go on as he tried to hold back his tears.
"Still in search of my aim in life" I answered feeling sad as well as happy to meet someone whom I had known from my old days when I was still young, a friend.
That evening Randy and I sat down eating food ,he was happy to see that I was taking care and had shouldered the responsibility of Jindu’s family well .Although he felt that Vishal wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who wouldn’t have committed the crime he was imprisoned for .He related to me what had happened ever since we had parted ways ,the last time was that prison cell were we both were for a night .He had been in the jail for a very long time without a trial .It had seemed that justice had forgotten him and he was condemned to live in his prison cell for ever ,but had been recently been released due to the efforts of a human rights organization associated with UNESCO . Although during his years in Jail he had moved on from smoking Hashish to sniffing kerosene which was generally available in the prison kitchens and was used for cooking purposes and to keep prisoners high.
"Look at these mountains, they are still in meditation." Randy said
"Yeah what did you expect them to do?" I asked.
"Well when I was in jail, I had prayed to them, prayed that they would get angry and move, destroy the prison cell, end my misery and yet nothing happened but they did listen to me one day and my misery kind of ended." Randy said.
"Well you really think they are alive?" I asked Randy.
"You tell me?" Randy said.
"I don’t know?" I answered .I told randy how I had been released and about Jindu, his daughter s misfortune and other events that had happened in my life in the last Decade
"So we are all going to meet again, you, me Jindu" Randy smiled
"All but one." he added.
"Who?" I asked.
"Linny, you remember her? "
"not exactly ,I have forgotten her face " I lied .
"You are lying boss." Randy who could make out that I was lying said.
"She might be dead for all that I care ,being on drugs for such a long time would kill an elephant and she was just a human ." I said
"She’s not dead, just half dead"Randy replied.
"How do you know?"I asked.
"Well I have been in kind of touch with her, not that I knew where she was or what she was doing but I have been haunting her for a long time now in her thoughts." Randy spoke as a chill ran down my spine knowing that linny was still alive.
"What do you mean she is in India?" I couldn’t hide my excitement.
"Yeah, and she is not on drugs anymore, she is in an asylum, she went mad after a drug overdose" Randy said.
"How do you know so much about her?" I asked Randy.
"you know these mountain saints are alive, that day when I was pulled of the bus by those cops, it had an accident, fell in to the river Beas .For days she was in the hospital on drugs which were rejected by her body .After staying in the hospital for a year when she went back to her old life her body finally gave up and she went mad, all she remembered was me and a guy named Siddhartha". Randy said.
"How do you know all this?" I was surprised at Randy’s knowledge about Linny.
"Well I knew about the accident but the rest of the story was told by someone we both know. How do you think I got out of Jail ,Do you think out of those ten thousand foreigners lodged in Jails in India ,they would choose a drug addict failed Indian music star to release." He said.
"How?" I was really getting interested to know who it had been who still remembered Randy.
"Well Siddhartha, do you remember Rizzla? The South African Girl you took on that trek behind the guest house." He said.
"Yes, very well." How could I forget Rizzla ,she had inspired me so much in life .Our waste from the restaurant was still disposed in proper way and not just thrown off a cliff .Infact our restaurant was known for its cleanliness and hygiene standards all over that sleepy little town in the Himalayas. She was the girl who had taught me to fight.
"Well She is working as a senior Administrator with the human rights commission for UNESCO and was recently in India to find out about the conditions of foreign nationals in the jails in India .She happened to visit the asylum where linny is staying and when the doctor told her how linny accused herself for my down fall ,she was able to recollect meeting you and me and found out about both of us ,She went to meet you first but came to know of your release and then she headed for prison .She only told me that you were released five years ago and she couldn’t find you but she helped me get out of Jail on human grounds as I had suffered enough ,I mean ten years is a long time for carrying 10 grams of hashish ."Randy finished his statements at one go.
"Where is she now, I want to thank her." I said as a tear rolled out of my left eye .I didn’t recollect when I had cried last but I wanted to cry now ,somebody had remembered me for all these years not for what I was .
"She left for Africa last Saturday, I was at the airport to see her off ,when she asked me where was I headed for next ,was I going to go back home ,I had said I would go to see the place where all this had started , the Shiv Shakti guest house ,but little had I known ,although it came as a surprise to me that the place was still running ,that I will meet someone whom I always wanted to see before an angel would come down and free me from this misery called life. You see that’s why I feel that these mountains are alive listening to every word I say now for they have fulfilled my last wish, now I can go in peace." Randy went silent.
"But why are you talking of death, I know I don’t want anything else more right now but it seems you are obsessed with it." I said
"Remember I was a rock star once so the grim reaper is an idol for me and all that I wish for now is to meet him, the sooner the better, and remember john is also there." Randy smiled .Randy hadn’t changed much, gone old, his hair turned grey; he no longer had those good looks but still had that jest for life, that sense of humor.
"Hey guys, what’s up?" Vishal who had been busy running around all this time taking care of the restaurant said as he came down and sat next to Randy.
"Nothing, Randy was telling me about his past, where he had been and of course an old friend of ours who got him out of jail." I said.
"Must be a foreigner." Vishal said.
"So what’s your story?" Randy Asked Vishal.
"I was in the jail too, Siddhartha must have told you, but I was framed and wasn’t really involved in that rape case, she was a drug addict and wanted to sleep with me and when I refused, she had framed me for raping her." Vishal said.
"Well ,I don’t understand it was supposed to be a one night stand then why didn’t you do it ,I mean it could have saved you from all this agony you have gone through." Randy said.
"humm…for starters she wasn’t good looking ,was flat chested, although she had a nice bum she had a goatee and this wasn’t a kind of girl you would like to sleep with ,she told me about her past to gain my sympathy and even used tablets to shit .God only knows what all diseases she was suffering from. " Vishal said. The person Vishal told us about seemed to be familiar or rather too familiar for in a nanosecond Randy and I had uttered the same word "Linny..."
"How did you guys know her name, I never mentioned that." Vishal sounded rather surprised. His face was contorted in disbelief as he read the expression written all over our face that we knew the person he had hated most in his life. He had hated her so much that he had vowed never to take her name and yet we had known her all along. It was strange that one wasted life could affect three lives in such a manner, and yet we do not know how our actions would affect some one we don’t even know.
"Well this is really strange, our nemesis happens to be the same person, Linny, and now she is suffering for her sins, hell and heaven are both on this planet, in this life, you have to pay for your sins here only. " Randy spoke philosophically.
"What does that mean, it went over my head, I just want to know how the fuck you guys know Linny, although I have this strange feeling that she was the one responsible for the downfall of you guys, isn’t it so."Vishal said.
"Alas the moment of truth has arrived, lend me thy ears Vishal and listen to the strange turn of events that have more spice than a bollywood movie." Randy spoke theoretically.
I had known this all along that Linny was the girl who had brought down Vishal but it happened to be linny’s version .I however could not relate Vishal to the rape that Linny had so vividly described that afternoon before she had acknowledged me to be her guru .When Vishal had told me that she was Italian my heart had jumped a beat and when he had described her in person I knew who it was but never had the guts to tell Vishal that I knew her ,this had almost slipped out of my mind till now when getting carried away Randy and I had said her name ,and now Vishal knew that I had known all along .
"Siddhartha so you had known this all along and you never told me that you knew Linny." Vishal who felt cheated spoke.
"What was I supposed to tell you Vishal that the person who did this to you ,considered me to be her guru ,she broke my heart ,remember the first day when we met, you had told me about her and I knew it then, yet I knew she was wrong. I can make out the difference between right and wrong ,maybe you will understand the fact that I cherish you as a friend more than an enemy ,for I would have love to take revenge from a person who had supposedly raped my love . " I said.
Randy was looking at me dumbfounded as he couldn’t make any sense of what I had just said ,hell I couldn’t understand what I had just said but it did make sense to Vishal who got up and gave me hug. Tears rolling out of our eyes we hugged and stood there ,The mountain saints smiled and the fog that had so evidently tried to mar our friendship was gone .The stars came out in full force .It was a clear sky ,an astronomers dream .
"Hey guys, a shooting star, wish for something." Randy shouted and closed his eyes.
Vishal and I looked at Randy who had the innocence of a child on his face .For the first time I felt close to Randy, there was much more to his persona than his act of behaving like a moron.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
The journey of life chapter four
Guru Siddhartha
"She doesn’t have great legs but exposing like hell, I mean she is those good in bed types" Randy who had been staring at linny commented.
"What's your point?" I asked randy getting a little bit irritated because Randy was loud enough for even linny to hear that smart comment just made.
"Well look at those thin legs but she’s got a real nice butt, really tempting, doesn’t it excite you ever." Randy said as he stood there staring at linny who was cooking her breakfast in Jindu’s restaurant kitchen much to his displeasure who saw good money lost as he couldn’t make any profit in the fair that linny cooked for herself and her friends .
"Well did you do her?’ Randy asked.
"Hey you have gone crazy, stop smoking." I answered getting a little angry by this sudden invasion in to my private space.
"Ah then what were you doing in her room yesterday afternoon for a full two hours." Randy asked smiling cunningly.
"Nothing, she was telling me about her life." I answered looking at the mountains who were still in there place. I wondered if I really was expecting them to move away somewhere else. Looking down upon insignificant mortals, brushing them off as they tried to reach the summit. It seemed as if they could no longer stand the tickling sensation. People who had gone trekking were lost never to be found again, preserved in the snow for eternity they were reminders of things that went horribly wrong when you tried to tamper with nature.
"hey what are you thinking, you didn’t answer my question." Randy asked.
"Nothing I was wondering, what if these mountains were alive, listening in to our conversation right now, thinking what jerk off we guys really are." I replied changing the topic.
"I know what they are thinking boss.’ Randy said.
"What?" I questioned back.
"They are wondering how the fuck we knew about this plant which gives us this cool stuff." Randy said as he drew smoke from his spiff.
"Humm... That is something I never could have thought off, you are a genius." Randy was unable to catch the sarcasm in my statement.
"Thanks man. So what was it that you and linny were discussing so passionately about yesterday?" He asked.
"Nothing." Was my answer.
Linny had called me to her room the previous afternoon on the pretext of smoking hashish but after a couple of joints our conversation had wandered off to discussing her personal life.
She was sad, her story right out of a masala bollywood flick.
"The man who is my father is not the man my mother married; he screwed her and left her before marriage. My grand mother who was a woman of principles threw my mom out of the house and she was left to fend for herself." Linny said.
"Was it such a big deal?" I asked linny, I knew in India this was a big deal for a girl to become pregnant before marriage but in Italy I thought things were different and it rather came as a surprise that out there people were just as rigid as they were in India.
"Go on then what happened?" I asked as I was really keen on knowing what happened after that.
"My mother who had no shelter approached a college friend of hers and he gave her shelter, eventually he married my mom but he could never come to terms with the fact that I was not his daughter, he used to beat my mother and when I was five years old ,my mother started hating me blaming me for all the misery that was in her life."
"After a while my father left us and from there on life was hell, to reduce the pain and anguish I started taking drugs trying to find a solution but my mothers face would appear every time I would be high. To escape that each year I come to India stay here for six months because this is the only country where you can live like a king for six months on a small budget plus I have so many friends here that it is a home away from home." Linny said.
"Did you ever ask your mother your fault? Did you ever try to reciprocate love if there was ever a time when she felt lonely?’ I asked linny.
"Well, I did do that but my mother has transformed in to a machine who does not know what caring all is about, she is living in her past. The nail in the coffin was when my grand mother died and she came to know about it six months later when a letter that she had posted to her came back with receiver deceased on it." Linny said.
"I am sorry." That was all I could say. I could not think of any better sentence and I was rather busy brooding over the fact, what a little money could do for you in this country especially if it happened to be a foreign currency that was better than the dollar.
Linny had this advantage of being born in such a country and was in a way utilizing this advantage to the maximum. Each year she would come back, year after year, looking for a quick fix and a solution to her problems which of course were just not there so she would dope crazy, cursing, and mistrusting people around her.
"Why don’t you trust people around you? Why do you have this wall around you?" I asked linny.
"I will tell you Siddhartha. Two years ago I was visiting this place and at time I was not even high on drugs, I had this guide whom I had hired for a trek in to the Himalayas. It was a six day trek and one night he raped me, although he is in jail now paying for his sins but that incident sealed my fate. I will never be happy again." Linny said.
"What?" I was shocked to hear this and was filled with sudden remorse, I felt like hugging her but couldn’t as I wasn’t sure how she would have reacted. Linny rolled another spiff and passed it on which I duty fully lit.
"Ever thought of adopting a child and bringing her up the way you always wanted your mother to bring you up?" I asked linny.
"Oh yes, but you know what I met this doctor and he told me to adopt the little girl inside me, nurture her, cherish the beautiful feeling inside me, bring her up the way I always wanted her to be." Linny’s answer left me speechless. Here was a girl I thought was enjoying her life but in reality her misery was much greater than what I was undergoing. I had everything and the only problems that I had were self made. I felt like taking care of linny but I knew she wouldn’t have agreed to it .She was a person who believed in finding her solutions herself.
"You know Siddhartha I generally do not discuss my problems with anyone and the only reason why I did it with you was that I find realms of positive energy around you, I feel good in your company. I feel safe and you speak the truth no matter how harsh it is. I remember the first day when you had told me to start believing in myself, I knew that this person had something which will help me out in the long run and although now you know about my life, I feel safe in the fact that this information is safe." Linny concluded.
"Do you believe in God?" I asked linny.
"Yes I do, but not the idol worshipping, I know God is testing me and although I maybe a fallen angel bound to suffer I will not give up my faith, I saw this picture of some God in your room, it seemed to impart so much peace and sense of achievement. I wanted to ask you if I could have it." Linny said.
"Sure you can." I got up and went to my room to get it but linny’s room was locked when I came back. I stood there thinking if all this was real. During dinner I saw linny and I knew she was avoiding me. I had felt the same way before. When you tell about your life to some one you are taking of your inhibitions till there are none and then you are naked standing there thinking why you did it.
I walked up to linny and she looked at me trying to avoid me.
"Hello linny, how are you feeling now?" I asked her.
"Thank you Siddhartha for being such a great friend and a spiritual guru." Linny gave me a warm hug.
Now was I a spiritual guru or not this was something only linny could decide but one thing was sure I had come to a conclusion that my problems were not the least complicated in comparison to linny’s.
"Well linny actually it was me who wanted to thank you not because you told me about your self but because I realized that my problems do have a solution unlike yours and they are not the least complicated for that matter." I said as I moved to sit on the next table. Linny had looked at me and smiled.
"So what were you and Linny discussing yesterday in her room?" Randy asked me again and I was transported once again to the present.
"Nothing, spiritual stuff and the likes of that." I tried to evade the topic once again.
"Hah, Spirituality you must be out of your mind all that female needs is a good bang." Randy laughed.
I wasn’t very pleased to hear this and decided not to go further on but Randy didn’t stop there. Although he changed the topic sensing that he had blurted out something that wasn’t really cool.
"She considers me to be her guru." I told Randy who went hysterical on hearing this.
"So now you are a guru…" He started laughing like a madman.
"Sir, you, yourself are confused about life, why on earth would you leave your job and come to the mountains to seek answer to a solution which already existed in your life. You were a chef and that’s what your aim in life was. God had provided the solution and yet you left it in search of a stupid quest which generally ends here in the Himalayas.’’ Randy had spoken words of wisdom or at least he thought so.
"Well I really don’t know if what you speak is true" I said looking away trying to hide my shame. It was the truth and I had been evading it till now but even Randy was able to deduce it and this was something I could not fathom.
"You know Siddhartha; the truth is that all the solutions that you seek lie in your head and your head has gone crazy smoking this stuff." Randy pointed to the spiff in his hand.
"I think you are right but I am not sure, I know about this from long ago and I have to seek answers to some other problems in life." I said as I moved towards my room.
Randy was right. Why was I here? What was I searching for? Peace, it was still nowhere around. God, I had lost my faith years ago. Love, this was the strangest of places where I could find it. So what was I looking for? I was actually confused.
Break up with Linny
Our mind has a strange power. It can conjure up things, which in the real world would be impossible to achieve. It can make you in to a movie star, a rich business tycoon or a head of state or in my case a hopeless lover. Yes I was in love. In love with Linny. I knew she wasn’t a girl whose company any self respecting man would even tolerate but I was a man with no self respect.
I had started out on this journey when I had lost it all; now looking back I found self respect was amongst them. I would sit and dope crazy with Jindu and Randy while thinking of my past that suddenly seemed to be much better than my present condition. I was a hopeless lover with no job, no self respect and a drug addict. Of course I hadn’t admitted my love for Linny as I was afraid that she would leave me if she came to know of my feelings for her. To solve this problem, I would, each day think of new ways to propose to her. The in sanest being hiring a helicopter and taking her to the highest peak and propose my love there. This plan had to be let off when I came to know that such ambition would burn a hole in my pocket by thirty thousand. An amount I wasn’t willing to spend on something that didn’t guarantee success.
I just loved Linny, her five foot six inches height, shoulder length brunette hair, small nose, and flat chest. Hell, I even loved the four strands of hair on her chin, which were probably a result of some hormonal changes, a side effect of excessive drug abuse.
"Hi Sid." Linny my sunshine had woken up.
"Hi… How are you doing babes?’’ Our relationship had reached the Sid and babe routine. Well, she had asked me to call her babes as she found it sounding nice the way I spoke it while I in return had asked her to call me Sid not because I didn’t like my name but the way she pronounced it calling me Shit heart.
"I was thinking last night about what you said about peace and tuning of mind to listen to your inner self. Meditation really is helping me to keep on top of things.’’ Linny said.
"I told you that meditation is the best remedy for all problems, its about freeing your mind from the grasp of trivial things and to seek a higher plain in life." I replied.
"Very true." Linny said.
"What will you have for breakfast?" I asked Linny looking for the cue card that I had made in the night about spiritual stuff to tell her, to impress the wits out of her. Some how I had misplaced it and now was at a loss of words.
"You are such a jerk." She turned and went back to her room. Obviously I had uttered the wrong words. Words that made no sense at that point of time. I heard some one laughing. Surely it wasn’t the mountain Gods who were busy meditating. It was Randy who had been observing this exchange of words with deep concentration. The next best step was to seek advice from an expert.
"Hey Randy good morning you heard the whole thing where do you think I went wrong ,was it the way I spoke it or was it something I said" I asked him.
"well, well, well what can I say, you said the wrong words, she was expecting you to say something spiritual and all you could say was did you have break fast, now if I was in her place I would have definitely made out that you are some kind of an imposter trying to seduce her in to sleeping with her. " Randy said.
"You surely know that is not the case.’’ I said.
"On a serious note I feel that she is playing with both of our emotions , have you ever seen or realized the fact that she hasn’t purchased any dope till date and the last time I had asked her to get some, she had asked Jindu to put it on our tab fifty-fifty. Now what kind of a girl would do that until and unless there is something fishy going on." Randy said.
"Now who’s getting paranoid?" I said getting annoyed.
"Suit your self; ever since you and Linny have started this Sid babe routine, you have lost it completely. Believe me she is just using you, trust me on this one." Randy said.
"I love her and I want to marry her one day, it’s just that I am not sure how to propose her." I said.
"Yeah sure till that time you treat her to free dope and spiritual parties, and love, yeah sure, I am in love with Jindu’s wife, come on do a reality check buddy. She’s a foreign number, she can’t shit without gobbling those one thousand tablets or so it seems, she spits, she’s flat. Hell she’s even got a goatee, what on earth attracts you to her." Randy retorted.
""You won’t understand." I replied as I got up and walked thinking about what Randy had said. The little town was left behind, I kept on walking. The mountains looked down upon me. They seemed to be smiling, laughing at me, and talking to each other.
They seemed to discuss the end of this love story blossoming at their feet but they were the Gods and they knew the ending. It was me who had to find it.
I looked up and suddenly everything went quiet. Dark clouds appeared from nowhere hiding me from the eyes of the saints. The temperatures dropped and I felt a sudden chill. The weather was changing. It seemed that even Gods didn’t want me to be happy. After two hours of rain and snow, my sleepy little town had once again turned white. The mountain saints had seemed to grow their beards miraculously in the last two hours looking more daunting now.
I slipped and fell thrice before I could reach Shiv Shakti guest house. All this time I thought of Linny and I had decided that it was in the best interest of both of us that I should talk to her and let her know that I loved her. At least this way I would no longer suffer from guilt or fear of losing her.
Randy who was sitting in his balcony waved as he saw me approaching.
"Hey, where had you been and why are your clothes dirty. I am sure you fell quite a few times before you could reach back." He smiled.
"Yeah I did." I said ignoring that smile of his which seemed to make fun of our relationship.
"When you were gone, Linny and I saw some great things being formed in those trees due to snow; she was hoping that you would be here to explain the deeper significance of those forms. Guess my reasoning was just not good enough for her." He said."
"What did you tell her?" I asked as I felt a strange void around the place. Some thing was definitely wrong I could feel it in the air.
""Well, nothing regarding your feelings towards her for sure, she didn’t like the fact that you left her behind when you went for a walk. I had to tell her that it was something personal that you had to sort out, like buy some condoms to keep your dick warm at night." Randy Laughed.
"Yeah sure bastard." I said.
"It snowed pretty heavy out here and Jindu tells me that its going to snow for the next three days, the weather forecast has it all sorted out on the radio." Randy filled me with important information which I was least interested in knowing.
"All right, where is she?" I finally asked Randy as he was now getting on my nerves giving me information I was least interested in.
"She jumped of that cliff." Randy said pointing to a nasty cliff near the guest house so seriously that for once I thought he was telling the truth.
"Cut the bull crap, I want an answer now." I demanded.
"There." Randy pointed to house in the valley. Surely I could make out Linny standing in the Balcony with someone.
"She’s got a friend staying there, who was in goa and came back in today." Randy said.
"Who is he?" I asked Randy. I knew it was all over and what was left, was the postmortem of a dead situation.
"Her boyfriend, surely she must have told her Guru about him, oh she didn’t, so sorry Mr. Spiritual guru your student hid an important aspect of her life from you." Randy rubbed salt in to my wounds as I stood there on the verge of crying.
"I had told you before, she is using us but you wouldn’t listen. Today he came and she packed her bags and moved with him. Jindu tells me he is a British guy and stays here." Randy said.
She was gone. Just like that, no thank you, no good bye, all that was left was a void. I could see her standing down there in that balcony with a guy, maybe they were kissing. She seemed to have already forgotten me or else she would have at least told me about him. Maybe I should have told her while I was still ahead in the race. I had finally understood that we all were travelers in this journey called life. Getting attached to some one meant complicating things. To achieve Nirvana one had to let go of worldly desires.
They say throw away the thing you love the most, if it ever comes back to you, it was yours, else’s it never was.
It snowed for the next three days. The temperatures dipping as low as -5 degrees it seemed impossible to do anything except sit in front of a wooden heater and smoke dope. I was worried about Linny who had moved to her boyfriend’s house.
"Oh don’t worry her boyfriend will keep her warm, its us who have worry about wood being put in to the oven. Jindu get some more wood, this stupid fire is about to extinguish." Randy who was wrapped in a blanket said.
"This God damn Jindu tells me that he has run out of dope and can’t get it stops snowing." Randy said.
We discussed events of the past day and deducted that Linny Infact was extremely shrewd and had used us. Although I was in love with Linny to avoid any arguments, I had agreed with Randy. I was feeling strange, maybe I was sick.
"She will suffer in hell, only if we had all that dope she smoked." Randy was beginning to loose it now.
"Uh… Yeah" I whispered not sure if Randy even heard it. I was surprised what dope could do to you and was reminded of that beggar, I had met in the by lanes of Delhi, Who had thrown that fifty paisa coin on my face. Did I look like him now? The cramps were getting stronger with each passing minute. My mind stopped functioning, strange colors started to appear before my eyes.
"May be I should drink some tea." I thought." My childhood had started to appear before my eyes now.
"Hey, it’s my turn to bat." My brother shouted as I ran after getting out.
"Later, I got to study, tomorrow." I said.
"Siddhartha, you scored excellent marks." My mother had said on the phone after my high school result came out and I was to nervous to go and check it.
"Should I marry him?" My girl friends face appeared in front of my eyes now.
"Come Siddhartha, lets go. I have come to release you of this misery. You have suffered enough in this world…" An angel’s face had appeared now. I was at peace.
"But my aim still eludes me, I cannot go." I said.
"Siddhartha, Siddhartha." Randy was desperately calling out.
"Huh, what happened?" I was brought out of my dream or was it real.
"Man you stopped breathing." Randy said, sweat dripping down his face. The room seemed to be extremely cold and I knew that it was all real.
I got up and came out of the room. It was snowing outside. I looked up and saw zillions of snow flakes coming towards me, each one a fallen angel condemned to die a silent death.
"Why me God, why me?" I shouted looking towards the sky. A tear rolled out of my eye and instantly froze. I kept crying till I could cry no more. My heart felt a sudden relief, I knew somehow the dark clouds shall pass over and the silver lining was round the corner.
"You alright Siddhartha?" Randy came stumbling behind me.
"Hey, you are crying, don’t worry I have asked Jindu to get some more dope." He said.
"No, I wasn’t crying." I said as I wiped my face with snow.
"Let’s go inside and eat something." I said as I got up to go inside. It was extremely cold outside and now the chill had started to seep in to my body.
That night we ate as if there was no tomorrow. My belief in God was strengthened by this near death experience.
Next morning the sun was out in full force, Snow fighting a loosing battle melted making the grounds slippery and difficult to walk. Jindu was busy clearing the walk ways while Randy and I sat enjoying the beautiful morning sun.
"I tell you I love the food that Swarnalata cooks." Randy said.
"Yeah, tell Jindu about it." I said as I nibbled my toast tossing the sides to crows that religiously gathered everyday on our balcony for their morning meals.
"Who were you talking too yesterday?" Randy asked.
"When?" I asked knowing well what Randy was referring to.
"Yesterday when you went in to your trance mode." Randy said.
"Oh that was nothing; I don’t wish to discuss that." I said.
"But…" Randy’s sentence was cut short by some commotion in the doorway that was blocked by ice. A familiar face appeared and she came running straight to me. It was Linny, she was back. She kept her back pack down and ran towards me. Before I knew it she gave me a warm hug as tears rolled out of her eyes.
"What’s wrong?" I asked.
"Ï am sorry, I left with out telling you." She replied.
"It’s alright, go and rest." I said pushing her away from me. Something had broken inside me and it was hurting a lot. Linny sensed it.
"What’s wrong?" She asked.
"Nothing." I replied.
"He is not well." Randy butted in sensing my awkwardness.
"What’s wrong Sid?" She asked.
"The name’s Siddhartha." I said as I turned away to look at the mountains covered from top to bottom in a layer of white. They looked back at me and smiled.
The silence intrigued me. Silence yet it conveys so much. Linny was no longer close to my heart or was it my ego that had forced me to take a decision that I was going to regret. At that time it was the best I could have thought of and I did what my heart said.
"Hey Jindu, get the keys to the room next to Randy’s." Linny shouted at Jindu who was busy clearing the snow unaware of what had just happened. Linny picked up her bags and walked down the staircase grumbling in anger.
"The bitch got guts to stay here after all this has happened. She knows pretty well what’s wrong with you and yet she behaves innocent. I am not offering any dope to her from now on." Randy shuffled in his chair and went back to eating much to the displeasure of the crows who flew away to look for food elsewhere.
"I won’t be smoking any more." I said.
"Cool, so I can have all your stuff." Randy said.
"Sure, if I have any." I replied.
Randy looked at me and looked away, I think he could read my mind at that time and he knew that I was not going to smoke anymore, this however did not bother him as it was time to change loyalties which depended on whether you have it or you don’t and I was the looser here as that evening I saw randy team up with linny discussing Nirvana and its theory while I sat in a corner missing the high that had given me friends and a care free life. I looked up but the divine thing had occurred and I decided not to give in to the devil that seemed to coax me. The cramps appeared and reappeared but I stood stuck to the notion that I was no longer going to be dependant on anything, it was always better to leave before they hurt you right down there in the balls.
Jindu who also owned a restaurant was keen on getting some tips from me how to increase his revenue. It was a small place constructed above the four rooms of the Shiv Shakti guest house and had a breath taking view of the Himalayas. There was a small kitchen and eight tables with cheap plastic chairs .Every season with the advent of summers he would open it, hire some help and run it serving cheap food and hashish but one thing was there, he had build it esthetically and used lot of wood to decorate the ceiling so the place looked like a good restaurant serving cheap hash.
"Why don’t you get some proper chairs and table?" I asked Jindu one day.
"No use, my clients are the same bunch of dope heads who come year after year to smoke, they don’t care for what I give them nor they are wiling to pay more its like a no win situation." He had answered.
This was a fact as all the clients he seemed to have were Linny, her boyfriend Daniel (yes they had gotten together after the break up) and there friends who would sit in the restaurant and ask Jindu for food. Jindu maintained a book and all there food bills would go in there it was a no win situation as I had often seen Jindu fighting over five or ten rupees which generally did not matter. I suggested Jindu a lot of changes but the only thing he seemed to agree on was to increase the prices of dishes after I explained him the concepts of overheads. This was not really welcomed by his regular guests who seemed to know the prices of dishes by heart. They complained and eyed me with distrust as I was a criminal out there to rob them of there travel money.
Jindu however stuck to the new rates which were nominally increased after much due consideration .Although I taught his help some finer points of cooking Jindu wasn’t very happy with the idea of putting garnishes on the dishes as he considered it a waste of good vegetables.
How ever I no longer had to pay for my meals as I had become a kind of in house chef innovating and introducing new menus and would help Jindu run the place making accounts and keeping a tab on the expenditures. The business started to pick up and soon we were doing good business of two grand a day much to the displeasure of the regulars who no longer could smoke dope openly as lot of people would come every day to taste the food that we were so meticulously making. Jindu was excited as he never thought he could make money from this place. Our customers just loved the mushroom masala and carom board, a smaller version of pool.
However linny and gang became extremely impatient as they did not have their clubhouse any more and for this they blamed me. They started to complain of poor service and lack of hygiene but it was Jindu who put his foot down and told them if they had a problem it was them who had to leave. This shut them up for some time and things were smooth from there on.
Randy would often sit with them although he sympathized with me. I guess hashish was big drawing factors in this part of the mountains where friendships are made and broken depending on the fact whether you smoke or you don’t smoke.
"Hey sid, you sure you won’t smoke?" he would often ask me tempting me before passing of the chillum to his wild friends. Linny would eye me and was surprised how some one could be so strong to leave some thing like hashish just like that.
I had made a couple of new friends now that a lot of long staying guests else where had made it a point to eat at the Shiv Shakti guest house every day. Each day a young girl in her early twenties would visit us for breakfast. She was pretty average looking but there was some thing about her that intrigued me especially her eyes .She had the most amazing eyes that I had ever seen. I would wait for her to come every day and I knew what she liked to eat which was muesli with curd. Each day I would try some thing new with her muesli decorating it in a different way. I would make it a point to put some extra banana in her milk shake. We never talked besides saying good morning and her placing her order .After the breakfast she would disappear in the mountains behind the restaurant, come back in the evening and eat dinner.
"Hi, Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to ask you some thing?" I mustered the courage to ask her one day.
"Yes, of course." She replied.
"Well, I was just wondering if you could tell me where you go every day in those mountains." I said pointing to the mountain she would disappear in to every day. I had often seen her walking on to a trail until she would disappear behind the mountain.
"Oh, I discovered that route and each day I walk as far as I can, it’s a great exercise." She said
"Have you been there?" she asked me.
"No, I haven’t, never got the time to go in there." I lied.
"Would you like to come with me some time?" She asked me looking at me as if she could read my mind.
"Yeah sure." I replied.
"Now"
"Ok" I said.
"I am Rizzla, Its what you make of it." she said.
I smiled and said "I am Siddhartha like in Herman hesse also as in Guatam Buddha." I had found it easier to explain my name to strangers this way as most of the traveling kind had read the book Siddhartha by the great writer.
"Yeah no deep meaning in my name though, its what you make of it sounds like a rolling paper." She laughed and the ice between us was broken that awkwardness of talking to a stranger disappeared and we were soon sitting there discussing food and the mountains.
"Let me inform Jindu that I will be gone for the day." I said as I got up to tell Jindu.
Rizzla was from South Africa and was traveling alone. She had been to Rajasthan and goa before reaching the Himalayas. She was a traveler and I knew that craving. I had once done that and I knew it well that although she could turn back and go to what she had left I would never be able to do so. This was life and I had left what I had in life there was no turning back now. The climb was steep initially but slowly it turned in to a more even trail.
"So you are not on a mission like self realization or soul searching?" I asked her as we walked on that mountain trial. She stopping now and then to pick up crystal stones which looked like gems however were of no value in the commodity market.
"You see life has so many things to offer, you just have to reach forward and grab them as they come, like these stones, you kick them and you get nothing, you put them in a necklace and you get some thing, you feel great, when you create it brings in harmony and peace within oneself, the positive energy starts to flow." She answered.
"Humm…" I said scratching my chin wondering how she knew so much about life, while here I was much older and yet wondering about my aim in life.
"But what if you don’t know what you want from life?" I asked her wondering if she had the answer to my questions in life which every one whom I seem to know didn’t .Was my search going to end here. Was I about to find out what I wanted in life?
"Why do you ask me this? Do you feel that way? I see you every day working at Jindu’s restaurant and you are in command of what you do. I like the food you cook, the innovations, the garnishes. Let me explain it to you in your language. You create dishes wonderful dishes don’t you feel any thing?" she asked me.
"But that is some thing I don’t want to do and if that is what I wanted to do why did I leave my job in the first place? Why this trip?" I was confused now and wasn’t able to understand the point Rizzla was trying to make here.
"Think again." She said and went quiet as we kept on walking. Her words now haunted me, I was a chef and that is what I enjoyed doing most. Was it time to go back I wondered. Back to my old life back to those hell kitchen.
"I know a lot about you Sid, You are on the run, running away from routine life, looking for adventure but you didn’t even bother to look for this route even if it was there right behind you." She said. Her words now hit me hard but were true. Every single word that she spoke was true and I could no longer look her in the eyes that had intrigued me so much till now.
"Life’s little desires are not the things you get but are the things that have been always there but you are too blind to see them, cribbing to God that he hasn’t given you enough, when all you have to do is to grab them, look for opportunities and make you move after all you need is food shelter and clothing." She continued.
We had reached the end of the trail which had led us to a beautiful water fall.
"Life’s little pleasures" She said as I stood there looking at that beautiful fall, a perfect view, a place yet to be exploited by mans petty economics.
"I lied to you Siddhartha; I have been coming here every day, cleaning it up, the mess left by so called campers and trekkers. People who do not realize that there is some one who is coming behind them and some body has already been there where they are going. Over the days I have been picking up empty packets and other non bio- degradable stuff and look at it now, as good as new, how ever I know that this is not going to be for long yet I am trying." She said.
"What is your profession?" I asked now completely smitten by her. I had been looking for so long for a girl like her and now that she was with me I couldn’t match up to her. Suddenly I started to feel so low, so shallow.
"I am a healer." She replied.
"Humm… So you are also on dope." I thought.
"I know what you are thinking." She suddenly surprised me.
"What?" I asked her.
"That I smoke illicit stuff, you don’t have to smoke dope to understand life Siddhartha, it’s a common thing which most of us don’t understand or don’t want to understand." She said.
"That is not what I was thinking, well actually I was but I stopped doing it once I realized it wasn’t the answer to what I seek in life." I said trying to be philosophical.
I was by now pretty clear in my head that you didn’t need to take help of some thing to realize what you wanted to get in life. Here was a girl who wasn’t doing any thing of that sort and yet was so clear and there was Randy who did nothing but smoked and yet was so confused in life about what he wanted from it. Strange things were going on and I was getting all the more confused not that I didn’t knew about all this but I had tried not to understand it till now and yet again the same things were now being told to me which I had always thought were not true. Should I believe her and go back or should I continue on my quest. I had no answer for it. Not yet.
"Hey you got all tensed up, relax, and tell me some thing about yourself." Rizzla smiled at me.
"Well there is nothing much to tell about" I said. I wanted to be alone now but was with her and she was making me think again of all the things I had done in life so she now appeared as a potential enemy in my plan of seeking my aim in life.
"Any girl friends" she asked me.
"No, had a couple of them, both of them left me for other guys." I said as their faces appeared one of them unmistakably linny.
"Oh I am sorry about that." She said as she looked at the mountains that looked even more majestic form here.
"What about you, any boyfriends?" I asked.
"Oh I have a steady boyfriend, I have known him for the last four years, and Kevin is the most amazing guy I have met. He is a dentist. Although he doesn’t understand my need to travel but never stops me from doing so, he gives me my space. In a relationship it is extremely important for you to give your partner the much needed space or the relationship begins to go sore and then it hurts, when you fail to understand the other persons need and try to impose your feelings on them." She said.
"So you have been in India for how long now?" I asked her trying to change the topic however she had told me before that she had been here for the last six months and had been to Rajasthan and Goa before arriving in that small sleepy town of mine.
"Six months" She said looking at me wondering if she hadn’t told me before.
"You know I am headed for Kerala tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?" She said and I knew she was attracted to me. The girl I had looked for was asking me to come with her and this was the perfect opportunity to say yes. To be with her.
"No, I cant I got a commitment here." I answered and instantly I knew she was disappointed by this answer.
"I understand" she said.
The sun was disappearing behind the mountains which turned pink. They seemed to cry as they bid fare well to there beloved sun. We had reached Shiv Shakti guest house, she loaded with her rocks had refused my assistance in any manner to carry them back for her.
That night we ate dinner together. Jindu smiled at me and Randy looked at me in displeasure for not telling him where I was headed for.
"I hope we meet again some day." She said as she got up to leave.
"Yes I hope so." I said.
She walked towards the door and then suddenly turned back and came running towards me and kissed me. At first I was surprised and then I gave in to my emotions and kissed her deeply and passionately.
"You want to stay back for a while." I asked her.
"No I got to pack." She said as she went out. Jindu came to me and congratulated me on this success. Randy ran up to me only to knock Ganguly down carrying a tray full of used utensils. Unperturbed he got up and came to me.
"So dude, what’s cooking?" he asked me with that familiar smile.
"Kidney bean soup." I smiled back at him.
"Bull shit, who was she? You lucky bastard." He asked me.
"She’s just a friend leaving for Kerala tomorrow." I said as I got up to go to my room. I knew linny had been watching what was going on and had sent Randy to investigate or so I thought but I wasn’t interested in getting her to understand that I was in love again or with her for that matter so I didn’t tell Randy any thing as discussing any thing would be foolish.
A hot bath was in order and as I stood under the shower I wondered if it was right decision or should I have had gone with her. Why did I do what I did? Was there some thing in it was it an opportunity that Rizzla had talked about. I did not know the answer. That night I slept like a log to tired from the day’s hike.
Slowly I had begun to realize that it wasn’t just Rizzla or me who were confused but a lot of people were. some who weren’t my gurus .To others I was their guru. It was funny as I had never considered myself one but yet now I was being cast in to this mould where I would discuss lot of spiritual stuff with lot of strangers who would be there and listen to me talk to them. I would often go in to the trance mode and tell them stuff they wanted to hear and stuff they were unwilling to hear. One such person was Jasmine, an Australian girl who had come down to the Himalayas after she had had a divorce and her boyfriend had left her. She was confused and would often come to me for spiritual guidance some thing I didn’t know I could actually help her out with.
"She doesn’t have great legs but exposing like hell, I mean she is those good in bed types" Randy who had been staring at linny commented.
"What's your point?" I asked randy getting a little bit irritated because Randy was loud enough for even linny to hear that smart comment just made.
"Well look at those thin legs but she’s got a real nice butt, really tempting, doesn’t it excite you ever." Randy said as he stood there staring at linny who was cooking her breakfast in Jindu’s restaurant kitchen much to his displeasure who saw good money lost as he couldn’t make any profit in the fair that linny cooked for herself and her friends .
"Well did you do her?’ Randy asked.
"Hey you have gone crazy, stop smoking." I answered getting a little angry by this sudden invasion in to my private space.
"Ah then what were you doing in her room yesterday afternoon for a full two hours." Randy asked smiling cunningly.
"Nothing, she was telling me about her life." I answered looking at the mountains who were still in there place. I wondered if I really was expecting them to move away somewhere else. Looking down upon insignificant mortals, brushing them off as they tried to reach the summit. It seemed as if they could no longer stand the tickling sensation. People who had gone trekking were lost never to be found again, preserved in the snow for eternity they were reminders of things that went horribly wrong when you tried to tamper with nature.
"hey what are you thinking, you didn’t answer my question." Randy asked.
"Nothing I was wondering, what if these mountains were alive, listening in to our conversation right now, thinking what jerk off we guys really are." I replied changing the topic.
"I know what they are thinking boss.’ Randy said.
"What?" I questioned back.
"They are wondering how the fuck we knew about this plant which gives us this cool stuff." Randy said as he drew smoke from his spiff.
"Humm... That is something I never could have thought off, you are a genius." Randy was unable to catch the sarcasm in my statement.
"Thanks man. So what was it that you and linny were discussing so passionately about yesterday?" He asked.
"Nothing." Was my answer.
Linny had called me to her room the previous afternoon on the pretext of smoking hashish but after a couple of joints our conversation had wandered off to discussing her personal life.
She was sad, her story right out of a masala bollywood flick.
"The man who is my father is not the man my mother married; he screwed her and left her before marriage. My grand mother who was a woman of principles threw my mom out of the house and she was left to fend for herself." Linny said.
"Was it such a big deal?" I asked linny, I knew in India this was a big deal for a girl to become pregnant before marriage but in Italy I thought things were different and it rather came as a surprise that out there people were just as rigid as they were in India.
"Go on then what happened?" I asked as I was really keen on knowing what happened after that.
"My mother who had no shelter approached a college friend of hers and he gave her shelter, eventually he married my mom but he could never come to terms with the fact that I was not his daughter, he used to beat my mother and when I was five years old ,my mother started hating me blaming me for all the misery that was in her life."
"After a while my father left us and from there on life was hell, to reduce the pain and anguish I started taking drugs trying to find a solution but my mothers face would appear every time I would be high. To escape that each year I come to India stay here for six months because this is the only country where you can live like a king for six months on a small budget plus I have so many friends here that it is a home away from home." Linny said.
"Did you ever ask your mother your fault? Did you ever try to reciprocate love if there was ever a time when she felt lonely?’ I asked linny.
"Well, I did do that but my mother has transformed in to a machine who does not know what caring all is about, she is living in her past. The nail in the coffin was when my grand mother died and she came to know about it six months later when a letter that she had posted to her came back with receiver deceased on it." Linny said.
"I am sorry." That was all I could say. I could not think of any better sentence and I was rather busy brooding over the fact, what a little money could do for you in this country especially if it happened to be a foreign currency that was better than the dollar.
Linny had this advantage of being born in such a country and was in a way utilizing this advantage to the maximum. Each year she would come back, year after year, looking for a quick fix and a solution to her problems which of course were just not there so she would dope crazy, cursing, and mistrusting people around her.
"Why don’t you trust people around you? Why do you have this wall around you?" I asked linny.
"I will tell you Siddhartha. Two years ago I was visiting this place and at time I was not even high on drugs, I had this guide whom I had hired for a trek in to the Himalayas. It was a six day trek and one night he raped me, although he is in jail now paying for his sins but that incident sealed my fate. I will never be happy again." Linny said.
"What?" I was shocked to hear this and was filled with sudden remorse, I felt like hugging her but couldn’t as I wasn’t sure how she would have reacted. Linny rolled another spiff and passed it on which I duty fully lit.
"Ever thought of adopting a child and bringing her up the way you always wanted your mother to bring you up?" I asked linny.
"Oh yes, but you know what I met this doctor and he told me to adopt the little girl inside me, nurture her, cherish the beautiful feeling inside me, bring her up the way I always wanted her to be." Linny’s answer left me speechless. Here was a girl I thought was enjoying her life but in reality her misery was much greater than what I was undergoing. I had everything and the only problems that I had were self made. I felt like taking care of linny but I knew she wouldn’t have agreed to it .She was a person who believed in finding her solutions herself.
"You know Siddhartha I generally do not discuss my problems with anyone and the only reason why I did it with you was that I find realms of positive energy around you, I feel good in your company. I feel safe and you speak the truth no matter how harsh it is. I remember the first day when you had told me to start believing in myself, I knew that this person had something which will help me out in the long run and although now you know about my life, I feel safe in the fact that this information is safe." Linny concluded.
"Do you believe in God?" I asked linny.
"Yes I do, but not the idol worshipping, I know God is testing me and although I maybe a fallen angel bound to suffer I will not give up my faith, I saw this picture of some God in your room, it seemed to impart so much peace and sense of achievement. I wanted to ask you if I could have it." Linny said.
"Sure you can." I got up and went to my room to get it but linny’s room was locked when I came back. I stood there thinking if all this was real. During dinner I saw linny and I knew she was avoiding me. I had felt the same way before. When you tell about your life to some one you are taking of your inhibitions till there are none and then you are naked standing there thinking why you did it.
I walked up to linny and she looked at me trying to avoid me.
"Hello linny, how are you feeling now?" I asked her.
"Thank you Siddhartha for being such a great friend and a spiritual guru." Linny gave me a warm hug.
Now was I a spiritual guru or not this was something only linny could decide but one thing was sure I had come to a conclusion that my problems were not the least complicated in comparison to linny’s.
"Well linny actually it was me who wanted to thank you not because you told me about your self but because I realized that my problems do have a solution unlike yours and they are not the least complicated for that matter." I said as I moved to sit on the next table. Linny had looked at me and smiled.
"So what were you and Linny discussing yesterday in her room?" Randy asked me again and I was transported once again to the present.
"Nothing, spiritual stuff and the likes of that." I tried to evade the topic once again.
"Hah, Spirituality you must be out of your mind all that female needs is a good bang." Randy laughed.
I wasn’t very pleased to hear this and decided not to go further on but Randy didn’t stop there. Although he changed the topic sensing that he had blurted out something that wasn’t really cool.
"She considers me to be her guru." I told Randy who went hysterical on hearing this.
"So now you are a guru…" He started laughing like a madman.
"Sir, you, yourself are confused about life, why on earth would you leave your job and come to the mountains to seek answer to a solution which already existed in your life. You were a chef and that’s what your aim in life was. God had provided the solution and yet you left it in search of a stupid quest which generally ends here in the Himalayas.’’ Randy had spoken words of wisdom or at least he thought so.
"Well I really don’t know if what you speak is true" I said looking away trying to hide my shame. It was the truth and I had been evading it till now but even Randy was able to deduce it and this was something I could not fathom.
"You know Siddhartha; the truth is that all the solutions that you seek lie in your head and your head has gone crazy smoking this stuff." Randy pointed to the spiff in his hand.
"I think you are right but I am not sure, I know about this from long ago and I have to seek answers to some other problems in life." I said as I moved towards my room.
Randy was right. Why was I here? What was I searching for? Peace, it was still nowhere around. God, I had lost my faith years ago. Love, this was the strangest of places where I could find it. So what was I looking for? I was actually confused.
Break up with Linny
Our mind has a strange power. It can conjure up things, which in the real world would be impossible to achieve. It can make you in to a movie star, a rich business tycoon or a head of state or in my case a hopeless lover. Yes I was in love. In love with Linny. I knew she wasn’t a girl whose company any self respecting man would even tolerate but I was a man with no self respect.
I had started out on this journey when I had lost it all; now looking back I found self respect was amongst them. I would sit and dope crazy with Jindu and Randy while thinking of my past that suddenly seemed to be much better than my present condition. I was a hopeless lover with no job, no self respect and a drug addict. Of course I hadn’t admitted my love for Linny as I was afraid that she would leave me if she came to know of my feelings for her. To solve this problem, I would, each day think of new ways to propose to her. The in sanest being hiring a helicopter and taking her to the highest peak and propose my love there. This plan had to be let off when I came to know that such ambition would burn a hole in my pocket by thirty thousand. An amount I wasn’t willing to spend on something that didn’t guarantee success.
I just loved Linny, her five foot six inches height, shoulder length brunette hair, small nose, and flat chest. Hell, I even loved the four strands of hair on her chin, which were probably a result of some hormonal changes, a side effect of excessive drug abuse.
"Hi Sid." Linny my sunshine had woken up.
"Hi… How are you doing babes?’’ Our relationship had reached the Sid and babe routine. Well, she had asked me to call her babes as she found it sounding nice the way I spoke it while I in return had asked her to call me Sid not because I didn’t like my name but the way she pronounced it calling me Shit heart.
"I was thinking last night about what you said about peace and tuning of mind to listen to your inner self. Meditation really is helping me to keep on top of things.’’ Linny said.
"I told you that meditation is the best remedy for all problems, its about freeing your mind from the grasp of trivial things and to seek a higher plain in life." I replied.
"Very true." Linny said.
"What will you have for breakfast?" I asked Linny looking for the cue card that I had made in the night about spiritual stuff to tell her, to impress the wits out of her. Some how I had misplaced it and now was at a loss of words.
"You are such a jerk." She turned and went back to her room. Obviously I had uttered the wrong words. Words that made no sense at that point of time. I heard some one laughing. Surely it wasn’t the mountain Gods who were busy meditating. It was Randy who had been observing this exchange of words with deep concentration. The next best step was to seek advice from an expert.
"Hey Randy good morning you heard the whole thing where do you think I went wrong ,was it the way I spoke it or was it something I said" I asked him.
"well, well, well what can I say, you said the wrong words, she was expecting you to say something spiritual and all you could say was did you have break fast, now if I was in her place I would have definitely made out that you are some kind of an imposter trying to seduce her in to sleeping with her. " Randy said.
"You surely know that is not the case.’’ I said.
"On a serious note I feel that she is playing with both of our emotions , have you ever seen or realized the fact that she hasn’t purchased any dope till date and the last time I had asked her to get some, she had asked Jindu to put it on our tab fifty-fifty. Now what kind of a girl would do that until and unless there is something fishy going on." Randy said.
"Now who’s getting paranoid?" I said getting annoyed.
"Suit your self; ever since you and Linny have started this Sid babe routine, you have lost it completely. Believe me she is just using you, trust me on this one." Randy said.
"I love her and I want to marry her one day, it’s just that I am not sure how to propose her." I said.
"Yeah sure till that time you treat her to free dope and spiritual parties, and love, yeah sure, I am in love with Jindu’s wife, come on do a reality check buddy. She’s a foreign number, she can’t shit without gobbling those one thousand tablets or so it seems, she spits, she’s flat. Hell she’s even got a goatee, what on earth attracts you to her." Randy retorted.
""You won’t understand." I replied as I got up and walked thinking about what Randy had said. The little town was left behind, I kept on walking. The mountains looked down upon me. They seemed to be smiling, laughing at me, and talking to each other.
They seemed to discuss the end of this love story blossoming at their feet but they were the Gods and they knew the ending. It was me who had to find it.
I looked up and suddenly everything went quiet. Dark clouds appeared from nowhere hiding me from the eyes of the saints. The temperatures dropped and I felt a sudden chill. The weather was changing. It seemed that even Gods didn’t want me to be happy. After two hours of rain and snow, my sleepy little town had once again turned white. The mountain saints had seemed to grow their beards miraculously in the last two hours looking more daunting now.
I slipped and fell thrice before I could reach Shiv Shakti guest house. All this time I thought of Linny and I had decided that it was in the best interest of both of us that I should talk to her and let her know that I loved her. At least this way I would no longer suffer from guilt or fear of losing her.
Randy who was sitting in his balcony waved as he saw me approaching.
"Hey, where had you been and why are your clothes dirty. I am sure you fell quite a few times before you could reach back." He smiled.
"Yeah I did." I said ignoring that smile of his which seemed to make fun of our relationship.
"When you were gone, Linny and I saw some great things being formed in those trees due to snow; she was hoping that you would be here to explain the deeper significance of those forms. Guess my reasoning was just not good enough for her." He said."
"What did you tell her?" I asked as I felt a strange void around the place. Some thing was definitely wrong I could feel it in the air.
""Well, nothing regarding your feelings towards her for sure, she didn’t like the fact that you left her behind when you went for a walk. I had to tell her that it was something personal that you had to sort out, like buy some condoms to keep your dick warm at night." Randy Laughed.
"Yeah sure bastard." I said.
"It snowed pretty heavy out here and Jindu tells me that its going to snow for the next three days, the weather forecast has it all sorted out on the radio." Randy filled me with important information which I was least interested in knowing.
"All right, where is she?" I finally asked Randy as he was now getting on my nerves giving me information I was least interested in.
"She jumped of that cliff." Randy said pointing to a nasty cliff near the guest house so seriously that for once I thought he was telling the truth.
"Cut the bull crap, I want an answer now." I demanded.
"There." Randy pointed to house in the valley. Surely I could make out Linny standing in the Balcony with someone.
"She’s got a friend staying there, who was in goa and came back in today." Randy said.
"Who is he?" I asked Randy. I knew it was all over and what was left, was the postmortem of a dead situation.
"Her boyfriend, surely she must have told her Guru about him, oh she didn’t, so sorry Mr. Spiritual guru your student hid an important aspect of her life from you." Randy rubbed salt in to my wounds as I stood there on the verge of crying.
"I had told you before, she is using us but you wouldn’t listen. Today he came and she packed her bags and moved with him. Jindu tells me he is a British guy and stays here." Randy said.
She was gone. Just like that, no thank you, no good bye, all that was left was a void. I could see her standing down there in that balcony with a guy, maybe they were kissing. She seemed to have already forgotten me or else she would have at least told me about him. Maybe I should have told her while I was still ahead in the race. I had finally understood that we all were travelers in this journey called life. Getting attached to some one meant complicating things. To achieve Nirvana one had to let go of worldly desires.
They say throw away the thing you love the most, if it ever comes back to you, it was yours, else’s it never was.
It snowed for the next three days. The temperatures dipping as low as -5 degrees it seemed impossible to do anything except sit in front of a wooden heater and smoke dope. I was worried about Linny who had moved to her boyfriend’s house.
"Oh don’t worry her boyfriend will keep her warm, its us who have worry about wood being put in to the oven. Jindu get some more wood, this stupid fire is about to extinguish." Randy who was wrapped in a blanket said.
"This God damn Jindu tells me that he has run out of dope and can’t get it stops snowing." Randy said.
We discussed events of the past day and deducted that Linny Infact was extremely shrewd and had used us. Although I was in love with Linny to avoid any arguments, I had agreed with Randy. I was feeling strange, maybe I was sick.
"She will suffer in hell, only if we had all that dope she smoked." Randy was beginning to loose it now.
"Uh… Yeah" I whispered not sure if Randy even heard it. I was surprised what dope could do to you and was reminded of that beggar, I had met in the by lanes of Delhi, Who had thrown that fifty paisa coin on my face. Did I look like him now? The cramps were getting stronger with each passing minute. My mind stopped functioning, strange colors started to appear before my eyes.
"May be I should drink some tea." I thought." My childhood had started to appear before my eyes now.
"Hey, it’s my turn to bat." My brother shouted as I ran after getting out.
"Later, I got to study, tomorrow." I said.
"Siddhartha, you scored excellent marks." My mother had said on the phone after my high school result came out and I was to nervous to go and check it.
"Should I marry him?" My girl friends face appeared in front of my eyes now.
"Come Siddhartha, lets go. I have come to release you of this misery. You have suffered enough in this world…" An angel’s face had appeared now. I was at peace.
"But my aim still eludes me, I cannot go." I said.
"Siddhartha, Siddhartha." Randy was desperately calling out.
"Huh, what happened?" I was brought out of my dream or was it real.
"Man you stopped breathing." Randy said, sweat dripping down his face. The room seemed to be extremely cold and I knew that it was all real.
I got up and came out of the room. It was snowing outside. I looked up and saw zillions of snow flakes coming towards me, each one a fallen angel condemned to die a silent death.
"Why me God, why me?" I shouted looking towards the sky. A tear rolled out of my eye and instantly froze. I kept crying till I could cry no more. My heart felt a sudden relief, I knew somehow the dark clouds shall pass over and the silver lining was round the corner.
"You alright Siddhartha?" Randy came stumbling behind me.
"Hey, you are crying, don’t worry I have asked Jindu to get some more dope." He said.
"No, I wasn’t crying." I said as I wiped my face with snow.
"Let’s go inside and eat something." I said as I got up to go inside. It was extremely cold outside and now the chill had started to seep in to my body.
That night we ate as if there was no tomorrow. My belief in God was strengthened by this near death experience.
Next morning the sun was out in full force, Snow fighting a loosing battle melted making the grounds slippery and difficult to walk. Jindu was busy clearing the walk ways while Randy and I sat enjoying the beautiful morning sun.
"I tell you I love the food that Swarnalata cooks." Randy said.
"Yeah, tell Jindu about it." I said as I nibbled my toast tossing the sides to crows that religiously gathered everyday on our balcony for their morning meals.
"Who were you talking too yesterday?" Randy asked.
"When?" I asked knowing well what Randy was referring to.
"Yesterday when you went in to your trance mode." Randy said.
"Oh that was nothing; I don’t wish to discuss that." I said.
"But…" Randy’s sentence was cut short by some commotion in the doorway that was blocked by ice. A familiar face appeared and she came running straight to me. It was Linny, she was back. She kept her back pack down and ran towards me. Before I knew it she gave me a warm hug as tears rolled out of her eyes.
"What’s wrong?" I asked.
"Ï am sorry, I left with out telling you." She replied.
"It’s alright, go and rest." I said pushing her away from me. Something had broken inside me and it was hurting a lot. Linny sensed it.
"What’s wrong?" She asked.
"Nothing." I replied.
"He is not well." Randy butted in sensing my awkwardness.
"What’s wrong Sid?" She asked.
"The name’s Siddhartha." I said as I turned away to look at the mountains covered from top to bottom in a layer of white. They looked back at me and smiled.
The silence intrigued me. Silence yet it conveys so much. Linny was no longer close to my heart or was it my ego that had forced me to take a decision that I was going to regret. At that time it was the best I could have thought of and I did what my heart said.
"Hey Jindu, get the keys to the room next to Randy’s." Linny shouted at Jindu who was busy clearing the snow unaware of what had just happened. Linny picked up her bags and walked down the staircase grumbling in anger.
"The bitch got guts to stay here after all this has happened. She knows pretty well what’s wrong with you and yet she behaves innocent. I am not offering any dope to her from now on." Randy shuffled in his chair and went back to eating much to the displeasure of the crows who flew away to look for food elsewhere.
"I won’t be smoking any more." I said.
"Cool, so I can have all your stuff." Randy said.
"Sure, if I have any." I replied.
Randy looked at me and looked away, I think he could read my mind at that time and he knew that I was not going to smoke anymore, this however did not bother him as it was time to change loyalties which depended on whether you have it or you don’t and I was the looser here as that evening I saw randy team up with linny discussing Nirvana and its theory while I sat in a corner missing the high that had given me friends and a care free life. I looked up but the divine thing had occurred and I decided not to give in to the devil that seemed to coax me. The cramps appeared and reappeared but I stood stuck to the notion that I was no longer going to be dependant on anything, it was always better to leave before they hurt you right down there in the balls.
Jindu who also owned a restaurant was keen on getting some tips from me how to increase his revenue. It was a small place constructed above the four rooms of the Shiv Shakti guest house and had a breath taking view of the Himalayas. There was a small kitchen and eight tables with cheap plastic chairs .Every season with the advent of summers he would open it, hire some help and run it serving cheap food and hashish but one thing was there, he had build it esthetically and used lot of wood to decorate the ceiling so the place looked like a good restaurant serving cheap hash.
"Why don’t you get some proper chairs and table?" I asked Jindu one day.
"No use, my clients are the same bunch of dope heads who come year after year to smoke, they don’t care for what I give them nor they are wiling to pay more its like a no win situation." He had answered.
This was a fact as all the clients he seemed to have were Linny, her boyfriend Daniel (yes they had gotten together after the break up) and there friends who would sit in the restaurant and ask Jindu for food. Jindu maintained a book and all there food bills would go in there it was a no win situation as I had often seen Jindu fighting over five or ten rupees which generally did not matter. I suggested Jindu a lot of changes but the only thing he seemed to agree on was to increase the prices of dishes after I explained him the concepts of overheads. This was not really welcomed by his regular guests who seemed to know the prices of dishes by heart. They complained and eyed me with distrust as I was a criminal out there to rob them of there travel money.
Jindu however stuck to the new rates which were nominally increased after much due consideration .Although I taught his help some finer points of cooking Jindu wasn’t very happy with the idea of putting garnishes on the dishes as he considered it a waste of good vegetables.
How ever I no longer had to pay for my meals as I had become a kind of in house chef innovating and introducing new menus and would help Jindu run the place making accounts and keeping a tab on the expenditures. The business started to pick up and soon we were doing good business of two grand a day much to the displeasure of the regulars who no longer could smoke dope openly as lot of people would come every day to taste the food that we were so meticulously making. Jindu was excited as he never thought he could make money from this place. Our customers just loved the mushroom masala and carom board, a smaller version of pool.
However linny and gang became extremely impatient as they did not have their clubhouse any more and for this they blamed me. They started to complain of poor service and lack of hygiene but it was Jindu who put his foot down and told them if they had a problem it was them who had to leave. This shut them up for some time and things were smooth from there on.
Randy would often sit with them although he sympathized with me. I guess hashish was big drawing factors in this part of the mountains where friendships are made and broken depending on the fact whether you smoke or you don’t smoke.
"Hey sid, you sure you won’t smoke?" he would often ask me tempting me before passing of the chillum to his wild friends. Linny would eye me and was surprised how some one could be so strong to leave some thing like hashish just like that.
I had made a couple of new friends now that a lot of long staying guests else where had made it a point to eat at the Shiv Shakti guest house every day. Each day a young girl in her early twenties would visit us for breakfast. She was pretty average looking but there was some thing about her that intrigued me especially her eyes .She had the most amazing eyes that I had ever seen. I would wait for her to come every day and I knew what she liked to eat which was muesli with curd. Each day I would try some thing new with her muesli decorating it in a different way. I would make it a point to put some extra banana in her milk shake. We never talked besides saying good morning and her placing her order .After the breakfast she would disappear in the mountains behind the restaurant, come back in the evening and eat dinner.
"Hi, Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to ask you some thing?" I mustered the courage to ask her one day.
"Yes, of course." She replied.
"Well, I was just wondering if you could tell me where you go every day in those mountains." I said pointing to the mountain she would disappear in to every day. I had often seen her walking on to a trail until she would disappear behind the mountain.
"Oh, I discovered that route and each day I walk as far as I can, it’s a great exercise." She said
"Have you been there?" she asked me.
"No, I haven’t, never got the time to go in there." I lied.
"Would you like to come with me some time?" She asked me looking at me as if she could read my mind.
"Yeah sure." I replied.
"Now"
"Ok" I said.
"I am Rizzla, Its what you make of it." she said.
I smiled and said "I am Siddhartha like in Herman hesse also as in Guatam Buddha." I had found it easier to explain my name to strangers this way as most of the traveling kind had read the book Siddhartha by the great writer.
"Yeah no deep meaning in my name though, its what you make of it sounds like a rolling paper." She laughed and the ice between us was broken that awkwardness of talking to a stranger disappeared and we were soon sitting there discussing food and the mountains.
"Let me inform Jindu that I will be gone for the day." I said as I got up to tell Jindu.
Rizzla was from South Africa and was traveling alone. She had been to Rajasthan and goa before reaching the Himalayas. She was a traveler and I knew that craving. I had once done that and I knew it well that although she could turn back and go to what she had left I would never be able to do so. This was life and I had left what I had in life there was no turning back now. The climb was steep initially but slowly it turned in to a more even trail.
"So you are not on a mission like self realization or soul searching?" I asked her as we walked on that mountain trial. She stopping now and then to pick up crystal stones which looked like gems however were of no value in the commodity market.
"You see life has so many things to offer, you just have to reach forward and grab them as they come, like these stones, you kick them and you get nothing, you put them in a necklace and you get some thing, you feel great, when you create it brings in harmony and peace within oneself, the positive energy starts to flow." She answered.
"Humm…" I said scratching my chin wondering how she knew so much about life, while here I was much older and yet wondering about my aim in life.
"But what if you don’t know what you want from life?" I asked her wondering if she had the answer to my questions in life which every one whom I seem to know didn’t .Was my search going to end here. Was I about to find out what I wanted in life?
"Why do you ask me this? Do you feel that way? I see you every day working at Jindu’s restaurant and you are in command of what you do. I like the food you cook, the innovations, the garnishes. Let me explain it to you in your language. You create dishes wonderful dishes don’t you feel any thing?" she asked me.
"But that is some thing I don’t want to do and if that is what I wanted to do why did I leave my job in the first place? Why this trip?" I was confused now and wasn’t able to understand the point Rizzla was trying to make here.
"Think again." She said and went quiet as we kept on walking. Her words now haunted me, I was a chef and that is what I enjoyed doing most. Was it time to go back I wondered. Back to my old life back to those hell kitchen.
"I know a lot about you Sid, You are on the run, running away from routine life, looking for adventure but you didn’t even bother to look for this route even if it was there right behind you." She said. Her words now hit me hard but were true. Every single word that she spoke was true and I could no longer look her in the eyes that had intrigued me so much till now.
"Life’s little desires are not the things you get but are the things that have been always there but you are too blind to see them, cribbing to God that he hasn’t given you enough, when all you have to do is to grab them, look for opportunities and make you move after all you need is food shelter and clothing." She continued.
We had reached the end of the trail which had led us to a beautiful water fall.
"Life’s little pleasures" She said as I stood there looking at that beautiful fall, a perfect view, a place yet to be exploited by mans petty economics.
"I lied to you Siddhartha; I have been coming here every day, cleaning it up, the mess left by so called campers and trekkers. People who do not realize that there is some one who is coming behind them and some body has already been there where they are going. Over the days I have been picking up empty packets and other non bio- degradable stuff and look at it now, as good as new, how ever I know that this is not going to be for long yet I am trying." She said.
"What is your profession?" I asked now completely smitten by her. I had been looking for so long for a girl like her and now that she was with me I couldn’t match up to her. Suddenly I started to feel so low, so shallow.
"I am a healer." She replied.
"Humm… So you are also on dope." I thought.
"I know what you are thinking." She suddenly surprised me.
"What?" I asked her.
"That I smoke illicit stuff, you don’t have to smoke dope to understand life Siddhartha, it’s a common thing which most of us don’t understand or don’t want to understand." She said.
"That is not what I was thinking, well actually I was but I stopped doing it once I realized it wasn’t the answer to what I seek in life." I said trying to be philosophical.
I was by now pretty clear in my head that you didn’t need to take help of some thing to realize what you wanted to get in life. Here was a girl who wasn’t doing any thing of that sort and yet was so clear and there was Randy who did nothing but smoked and yet was so confused in life about what he wanted from it. Strange things were going on and I was getting all the more confused not that I didn’t knew about all this but I had tried not to understand it till now and yet again the same things were now being told to me which I had always thought were not true. Should I believe her and go back or should I continue on my quest. I had no answer for it. Not yet.
"Hey you got all tensed up, relax, and tell me some thing about yourself." Rizzla smiled at me.
"Well there is nothing much to tell about" I said. I wanted to be alone now but was with her and she was making me think again of all the things I had done in life so she now appeared as a potential enemy in my plan of seeking my aim in life.
"Any girl friends" she asked me.
"No, had a couple of them, both of them left me for other guys." I said as their faces appeared one of them unmistakably linny.
"Oh I am sorry about that." She said as she looked at the mountains that looked even more majestic form here.
"What about you, any boyfriends?" I asked.
"Oh I have a steady boyfriend, I have known him for the last four years, and Kevin is the most amazing guy I have met. He is a dentist. Although he doesn’t understand my need to travel but never stops me from doing so, he gives me my space. In a relationship it is extremely important for you to give your partner the much needed space or the relationship begins to go sore and then it hurts, when you fail to understand the other persons need and try to impose your feelings on them." She said.
"So you have been in India for how long now?" I asked her trying to change the topic however she had told me before that she had been here for the last six months and had been to Rajasthan and Goa before arriving in that small sleepy town of mine.
"Six months" She said looking at me wondering if she hadn’t told me before.
"You know I am headed for Kerala tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?" She said and I knew she was attracted to me. The girl I had looked for was asking me to come with her and this was the perfect opportunity to say yes. To be with her.
"No, I cant I got a commitment here." I answered and instantly I knew she was disappointed by this answer.
"I understand" she said.
The sun was disappearing behind the mountains which turned pink. They seemed to cry as they bid fare well to there beloved sun. We had reached Shiv Shakti guest house, she loaded with her rocks had refused my assistance in any manner to carry them back for her.
That night we ate dinner together. Jindu smiled at me and Randy looked at me in displeasure for not telling him where I was headed for.
"I hope we meet again some day." She said as she got up to leave.
"Yes I hope so." I said.
She walked towards the door and then suddenly turned back and came running towards me and kissed me. At first I was surprised and then I gave in to my emotions and kissed her deeply and passionately.
"You want to stay back for a while." I asked her.
"No I got to pack." She said as she went out. Jindu came to me and congratulated me on this success. Randy ran up to me only to knock Ganguly down carrying a tray full of used utensils. Unperturbed he got up and came to me.
"So dude, what’s cooking?" he asked me with that familiar smile.
"Kidney bean soup." I smiled back at him.
"Bull shit, who was she? You lucky bastard." He asked me.
"She’s just a friend leaving for Kerala tomorrow." I said as I got up to go to my room. I knew linny had been watching what was going on and had sent Randy to investigate or so I thought but I wasn’t interested in getting her to understand that I was in love again or with her for that matter so I didn’t tell Randy any thing as discussing any thing would be foolish.
A hot bath was in order and as I stood under the shower I wondered if it was right decision or should I have had gone with her. Why did I do what I did? Was there some thing in it was it an opportunity that Rizzla had talked about. I did not know the answer. That night I slept like a log to tired from the day’s hike.
Slowly I had begun to realize that it wasn’t just Rizzla or me who were confused but a lot of people were. some who weren’t my gurus .To others I was their guru. It was funny as I had never considered myself one but yet now I was being cast in to this mould where I would discuss lot of spiritual stuff with lot of strangers who would be there and listen to me talk to them. I would often go in to the trance mode and tell them stuff they wanted to hear and stuff they were unwilling to hear. One such person was Jasmine, an Australian girl who had come down to the Himalayas after she had had a divorce and her boyfriend had left her. She was confused and would often come to me for spiritual guidance some thing I didn’t know I could actually help her out with.
The journey of life -chapter 3
Leader of the losers
The sun yawned at the horizon, calling it a brand new day. It was Monday and today I had been in this sleepy town for two months. Life had still not answered my question; my aim still eluded me, my mind still not at peace. When I had come to this place I had believed that one day soon I shall be able to get the answers that I so desperately seek but they were just not there.
They say you build the walls around your own imprisonment. My mind had seized functioning, all that remained was hope. The mountain Gods were angry. They had shifted and turned, a rock had changed the course of the river for ever. The mountains kept shifting and bleeding, the wounds very much evident in the snow. My heart felt sad. The mountains were awake as if trying to say something, trying to make us humans understand that they no longer stood by us. The morning sun was bright and brought back hope. I decided to go for a walk.
I slipped thrice before I was able to get a solid footing on the ice. It was a sheer miracle that I had not broken any bones. Maybe it was that I was wearing too many clothes or sheer luck. As I walked in to the town I saw familiar faces. Newly weds gobbled ice cream and chat alike. It was an interesting sight; they seemed to be happy or were they? They were still to discover the truths about life but it. they were happy unlike me who didn’t know what to do with my life. A story of a newly wed came to my mind that had discovered how tough life was. She had made a great impact on me and I had decided not to get married after that.
"Take care beta, don’t fight, he is your husband." A man had told his newly wed daughter as I entered the compartment on the Delhi bound train. His sentence hooked me as I looked up to see a girl crying and her father trying to console her .Now she was no diva ,extremely fat, fair and nice features. She was probably married because of the fat dowry that had exchanged hands. She covered her face and was crying pretty dramatically giving those amazing sound effects .As the train started to snail out of the station, her father kissed her. No goodbyes, no thank you, no parting notes.
Staring in to the oblivion she looked depressed. Now I was sure that she hadn’t had a great first night, of course that would have been impossible with all the girth that she carried it would have been impossible physically but that surely wasn’t the case. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, she pulled out a mills and boon novel and started reading it, imagining her prince charming, tall dark and handsome, in reality a mediocre businessman who was not really interested in her or so it seemed at that time.
As she read, I stared, trying to analyze whether what I was thinking was true ,was it that book she read had disillusioned her, it had seemed so very much the case. Fed on a healthy diet of tandoori chickens and Mills and Boon she had become sick in both mind and body. What was it all about? Marriage a reality, prince charming an illusion . Now I was on a train where meals were served but she declined to have those, as a matter of fact she didn’t ate a morsel during the sixteen hour journey.
As the station drew closer she went back to her crying mode. The journey coming to an end or was it a new beginning, an answer which only she could provide. As she stepped off, a man approached her, her husband or so it seemed was a man of small stature, simply dressed, he had come to pick her up.
I had got my answer when she had looked at him and slipped the novel in to a near by dustbin.
The sun was bidding farewell, the mountains first turned orange and then pink, some kind of communication seemed to be occurring here only there were no words being exchanged. The lights of Shiv Shakti guest house guided me as I walked on the treacherous path which led to the guest house. The restaurant was relatively empty and in a corner sat Randy with Jindu who was rolling a joint.
"Where were you?" Randy asked, his eyes dropping, his peculiar smile in place. Jindu looked up and went back to his business of rolling.
"Ah, was at the town, checking my mail." I replied.
"So how was the day?" I asked.
"Nothing much." Randy answered.
"Just rolling and smoking, Jindu got this stuff from you know who and its rated as the best stuff in the world." Randy added.
"Humm… enjoy, I am tired and going to sleep now." I said.
As I lay in bed my past came haunting once again, I was a chef once more, being abused chopping that never ending heaps of onions, feeling lucky that no one could make out that those tears were real or were onion induced.
"hey get on the range." My chef had shouted one day. For six months I had been doing the potato and onion routine.
"Yeah you Siddhartha, prepare crepe suzette table nine." The chef had barked instructions as I washed my hands. The crepes were passable but I had finally arrived.
Over the years I had mastered the art.
"I want to leave." One day I had told the chef who was rather surprised to hear this coming from one of the hardest working guys in the kitchen.
"I cant explain." I had said.
I don’t know when I went to sleep. A knock on my door woke me up, it was all a bad dream. My past haunting me, my future\ full of uncertainty I ordered breakfast that was a standard forty rupee affair.
Randy was already awake, strumming his guitar he sat in the sun, his face making more movements than his hands , a crowd of local kids had gathered to enjoy this freak show free of cost.
"Hey Randy, those kids are making fun of you." I said as I sat down next to Randy.
"Ah, tell them to take a chillax." Randy replied.
"last night I met my guru in a dream that was so vivid it seemed to be real, he said I was going to achieve success pretty soon and there fore today I am going to practice." Randy muttered. Making no sense whatsoever, he got up and went to his room.
"What’s wrong with him? " I asked Jindu who walked in with my breakfast.
"Oh nothing I asked him for rent this morning and he is upset since then." Jindu replied.
"How much does he have to pay now?" I asked although I knew Jindu would never tell me the exact figure.
"Not much, I was telling him that the neighbors are complaining about his music and he kind of got angry threw money at my face and told me to shove it up my arse. I mean what kind of behavior is that, you don’t talk to your innkeeper like that." Jindu said.
"Relax Jindu, he is not really a bad guy, and besides he pays of his dues on time, he is just a little frustrated for not being able to make it big." I explained, although I wasn’t sure if he really understood any thing besides the language of money, my only concern was that Jindu did not throw out Randy who had grown close to me as a friend.
"Well, tell him to watch out. Next time I am not going to take any shit from him." Jindu said.
"Sure, I will do that, will you be going to the town today." I asked Jindu.
"Yes what do you need?" He asked.
"Some paper, news not rolling." I said as Jindu smiled and some tension was lifted from the air. I knew that this was going to be a very long relationship although at that time I didn’t know how long it was going to be.
"Hey mother fucker how are you doing today?" I asked Randy.
"Upside down." Was the reply. He was a rock star or so he called himself and had been struggling in the music world for a long time. Staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house, he had been trying to make music . Dope according to him stimulated his mind inspiring him to create while all that I could make out was noise or music heard elsewhere. His name was Randy and he had been staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house for some time now he had arrived a month before I had and was occupying the room on the ground floor for some strange reasons as there was no sunlight in that room. It was cold dark and strange. Randhir aka Randy would smoke whole day rolling joint after joint, discussing john Lennon , breakup of beetles and end of hippies.
"A sad case." I thought.
Life was unfair, but was it ever fair. Shiv Shakti guest house seemed to house all kind of loosers.Be it spiritual seekers like me or music lover like Randy.
"So dude what’s up?" I asked
"Nothing" he said as he pulled the last drag of a joint.
"You know john could write some amazing stuff after he smoked this stuff, some of his best works have been written after smoking this." He said as he prepared to make another joint.
"Yeah right" I said as I tore of some rolling paper to get it to the right size.
"Humm…you know Siddhartha what I like about this place ." he said.
"What?" I asked him
"Nothing bothers you….." he said as he lit up another joint.
Randy had passed out early in the morning at nine o clock. It seemed to me he had been smoking since last night and finally his brains had given up.
I got up to get out side and his last words haunted me "nothing bothers you." Was it true in a place away from civilization where the night sky lit with zillions of stars you could see with your naked eye, here were two men, one in search of his soul, the other for his music, but then music was his soul which meant we both were searching for the same things only the mediums for this search were different.
Was I running away from the civilized world, I guess I was. I wandered if I died in my room, surely Jindu was going to call the cops or maybe he won’t for the fear of getting caught in the drug trafficking case, so maybe he will throw my body off a cliff to make it look like an accident. Prospect of dying a mountaineers death was pretty exciting and I smiled at the thought.
"Hi are you the owner of this place?" The voice surprised me as I looked up.
"Uh…no up there." I pointed to Jindu’s house.
"Thanks" she said as she kept her backpack down.
"You can easily get a room here, the guest house is only fifty percent occupied." I said trying to make conversation.
"how did you know?" she asked.
"Well there are four rooms and only two are occupied.’ I said as I smiled at my own joke.
"Are you a rocket scientist?"
"No" I said.
"Well I could have never figured that out, good bye" she answered as she walked towards Jindu’s house.
I got up and ran to Randy’s room to inform him of this new development in out lives The news of having a female at our hotel excited Randy.
"Jolly good, now we can screw too…." Randy passed out again.
The idea did excite me as it had been a very long timesince ihad gone out with a girl, not in the last twenty seven years and I was twenty eight now and before that I don’t think I could have possibly have managed it physically. So I was a virgin and I thought about it all the time and this seemed to be right .Just like in the movies. God and spirituality came back with another jointand it was evening when I got up, hungry and thirdty I called Jindu who could be heard talking to some one.
I climbed down those steps which were surely a death sentence for some one care fully, I saw Jindu and our new nieghbour drinking tea.
"The bastard is going to charge ne ten bucks for that." I thought.
"Hey Jindu can you get me something to eat." I asked him waving at that new girl.
"Butter and toast." Jindu suggested.
"Fine." I ust wanted to eat and I knew that this was the best Jindu could do for me at this hour.
"Hi there, what’s your name?" I asked as Jindu left to make a quick forty rupees.
"Linny" she replied.
"I am Siddhartha ,like in herman hesse Siddhartha the famous author." I said trying to sound nice.
"Yes I have heard of that" she said.
"So why do you call your self by that name?" she asked
"huh… Well my parents named me that." I couldn’t come up with a better answer then that.
"Would you like to smoke?" She asked me.
"Well, Sure why not. " I said. I knew that this was going to be a fruit ful relationship. Friends made while smoking dope generally remained friends till there was more pot to be smoked ,more crpets to be burned As I rolled she watched me, studying my face.
"So what do you do?" She asked me as I neatly gummed the paper.
"Nothing now, I used to work at a hotel. Kind of retired now." I answered.
"What about you?" Iasked her.
"Same thing only a different department." She said and I knew she was lying. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying I thought but then mabe she was just hiding some thing she didn’t want to share with a stranger.
The sun yawned at the horizon, calling it a brand new day. It was Monday and today I had been in this sleepy town for two months. Life had still not answered my question; my aim still eluded me, my mind still not at peace. When I had come to this place I had believed that one day soon I shall be able to get the answers that I so desperately seek but they were just not there.
They say you build the walls around your own imprisonment. My mind had seized functioning, all that remained was hope. The mountain Gods were angry. They had shifted and turned, a rock had changed the course of the river for ever. The mountains kept shifting and bleeding, the wounds very much evident in the snow. My heart felt sad. The mountains were awake as if trying to say something, trying to make us humans understand that they no longer stood by us. The morning sun was bright and brought back hope. I decided to go for a walk.
I slipped thrice before I was able to get a solid footing on the ice. It was a sheer miracle that I had not broken any bones. Maybe it was that I was wearing too many clothes or sheer luck. As I walked in to the town I saw familiar faces. Newly weds gobbled ice cream and chat alike. It was an interesting sight; they seemed to be happy or were they? They were still to discover the truths about life but it. they were happy unlike me who didn’t know what to do with my life. A story of a newly wed came to my mind that had discovered how tough life was. She had made a great impact on me and I had decided not to get married after that.
"Take care beta, don’t fight, he is your husband." A man had told his newly wed daughter as I entered the compartment on the Delhi bound train. His sentence hooked me as I looked up to see a girl crying and her father trying to console her .Now she was no diva ,extremely fat, fair and nice features. She was probably married because of the fat dowry that had exchanged hands. She covered her face and was crying pretty dramatically giving those amazing sound effects .As the train started to snail out of the station, her father kissed her. No goodbyes, no thank you, no parting notes.
Staring in to the oblivion she looked depressed. Now I was sure that she hadn’t had a great first night, of course that would have been impossible with all the girth that she carried it would have been impossible physically but that surely wasn’t the case. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, she pulled out a mills and boon novel and started reading it, imagining her prince charming, tall dark and handsome, in reality a mediocre businessman who was not really interested in her or so it seemed at that time.
As she read, I stared, trying to analyze whether what I was thinking was true ,was it that book she read had disillusioned her, it had seemed so very much the case. Fed on a healthy diet of tandoori chickens and Mills and Boon she had become sick in both mind and body. What was it all about? Marriage a reality, prince charming an illusion . Now I was on a train where meals were served but she declined to have those, as a matter of fact she didn’t ate a morsel during the sixteen hour journey.
As the station drew closer she went back to her crying mode. The journey coming to an end or was it a new beginning, an answer which only she could provide. As she stepped off, a man approached her, her husband or so it seemed was a man of small stature, simply dressed, he had come to pick her up.
I had got my answer when she had looked at him and slipped the novel in to a near by dustbin.
The sun was bidding farewell, the mountains first turned orange and then pink, some kind of communication seemed to be occurring here only there were no words being exchanged. The lights of Shiv Shakti guest house guided me as I walked on the treacherous path which led to the guest house. The restaurant was relatively empty and in a corner sat Randy with Jindu who was rolling a joint.
"Where were you?" Randy asked, his eyes dropping, his peculiar smile in place. Jindu looked up and went back to his business of rolling.
"Ah, was at the town, checking my mail." I replied.
"So how was the day?" I asked.
"Nothing much." Randy answered.
"Just rolling and smoking, Jindu got this stuff from you know who and its rated as the best stuff in the world." Randy added.
"Humm… enjoy, I am tired and going to sleep now." I said.
As I lay in bed my past came haunting once again, I was a chef once more, being abused chopping that never ending heaps of onions, feeling lucky that no one could make out that those tears were real or were onion induced.
"hey get on the range." My chef had shouted one day. For six months I had been doing the potato and onion routine.
"Yeah you Siddhartha, prepare crepe suzette table nine." The chef had barked instructions as I washed my hands. The crepes were passable but I had finally arrived.
Over the years I had mastered the art.
"I want to leave." One day I had told the chef who was rather surprised to hear this coming from one of the hardest working guys in the kitchen.
"I cant explain." I had said.
I don’t know when I went to sleep. A knock on my door woke me up, it was all a bad dream. My past haunting me, my future\ full of uncertainty I ordered breakfast that was a standard forty rupee affair.
Randy was already awake, strumming his guitar he sat in the sun, his face making more movements than his hands , a crowd of local kids had gathered to enjoy this freak show free of cost.
"Hey Randy, those kids are making fun of you." I said as I sat down next to Randy.
"Ah, tell them to take a chillax." Randy replied.
"last night I met my guru in a dream that was so vivid it seemed to be real, he said I was going to achieve success pretty soon and there fore today I am going to practice." Randy muttered. Making no sense whatsoever, he got up and went to his room.
"What’s wrong with him? " I asked Jindu who walked in with my breakfast.
"Oh nothing I asked him for rent this morning and he is upset since then." Jindu replied.
"How much does he have to pay now?" I asked although I knew Jindu would never tell me the exact figure.
"Not much, I was telling him that the neighbors are complaining about his music and he kind of got angry threw money at my face and told me to shove it up my arse. I mean what kind of behavior is that, you don’t talk to your innkeeper like that." Jindu said.
"Relax Jindu, he is not really a bad guy, and besides he pays of his dues on time, he is just a little frustrated for not being able to make it big." I explained, although I wasn’t sure if he really understood any thing besides the language of money, my only concern was that Jindu did not throw out Randy who had grown close to me as a friend.
"Well, tell him to watch out. Next time I am not going to take any shit from him." Jindu said.
"Sure, I will do that, will you be going to the town today." I asked Jindu.
"Yes what do you need?" He asked.
"Some paper, news not rolling." I said as Jindu smiled and some tension was lifted from the air. I knew that this was going to be a very long relationship although at that time I didn’t know how long it was going to be.
"Hey mother fucker how are you doing today?" I asked Randy.
"Upside down." Was the reply. He was a rock star or so he called himself and had been struggling in the music world for a long time. Staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house, he had been trying to make music . Dope according to him stimulated his mind inspiring him to create while all that I could make out was noise or music heard elsewhere. His name was Randy and he had been staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house for some time now he had arrived a month before I had and was occupying the room on the ground floor for some strange reasons as there was no sunlight in that room. It was cold dark and strange. Randhir aka Randy would smoke whole day rolling joint after joint, discussing john Lennon , breakup of beetles and end of hippies.
"A sad case." I thought.
Life was unfair, but was it ever fair. Shiv Shakti guest house seemed to house all kind of loosers.Be it spiritual seekers like me or music lover like Randy.
"So dude what’s up?" I asked
"Nothing" he said as he pulled the last drag of a joint.
"You know john could write some amazing stuff after he smoked this stuff, some of his best works have been written after smoking this." He said as he prepared to make another joint.
"Yeah right" I said as I tore of some rolling paper to get it to the right size.
"Humm…you know Siddhartha what I like about this place ." he said.
"What?" I asked him
"Nothing bothers you….." he said as he lit up another joint.
Randy had passed out early in the morning at nine o clock. It seemed to me he had been smoking since last night and finally his brains had given up.
I got up to get out side and his last words haunted me "nothing bothers you." Was it true in a place away from civilization where the night sky lit with zillions of stars you could see with your naked eye, here were two men, one in search of his soul, the other for his music, but then music was his soul which meant we both were searching for the same things only the mediums for this search were different.
Was I running away from the civilized world, I guess I was. I wandered if I died in my room, surely Jindu was going to call the cops or maybe he won’t for the fear of getting caught in the drug trafficking case, so maybe he will throw my body off a cliff to make it look like an accident. Prospect of dying a mountaineers death was pretty exciting and I smiled at the thought.
"Hi are you the owner of this place?" The voice surprised me as I looked up.
"Uh…no up there." I pointed to Jindu’s house.
"Thanks" she said as she kept her backpack down.
"You can easily get a room here, the guest house is only fifty percent occupied." I said trying to make conversation.
"how did you know?" she asked.
"Well there are four rooms and only two are occupied.’ I said as I smiled at my own joke.
"Are you a rocket scientist?"
"No" I said.
"Well I could have never figured that out, good bye" she answered as she walked towards Jindu’s house.
I got up and ran to Randy’s room to inform him of this new development in out lives The news of having a female at our hotel excited Randy.
"Jolly good, now we can screw too…." Randy passed out again.
The idea did excite me as it had been a very long timesince ihad gone out with a girl, not in the last twenty seven years and I was twenty eight now and before that I don’t think I could have possibly have managed it physically. So I was a virgin and I thought about it all the time and this seemed to be right .Just like in the movies. God and spirituality came back with another jointand it was evening when I got up, hungry and thirdty I called Jindu who could be heard talking to some one.
I climbed down those steps which were surely a death sentence for some one care fully, I saw Jindu and our new nieghbour drinking tea.
"The bastard is going to charge ne ten bucks for that." I thought.
"Hey Jindu can you get me something to eat." I asked him waving at that new girl.
"Butter and toast." Jindu suggested.
"Fine." I ust wanted to eat and I knew that this was the best Jindu could do for me at this hour.
"Hi there, what’s your name?" I asked as Jindu left to make a quick forty rupees.
"Linny" she replied.
"I am Siddhartha ,like in herman hesse Siddhartha the famous author." I said trying to sound nice.
"Yes I have heard of that" she said.
"So why do you call your self by that name?" she asked
"huh… Well my parents named me that." I couldn’t come up with a better answer then that.
"Would you like to smoke?" She asked me.
"Well, Sure why not. " I said. I knew that this was going to be a fruit ful relationship. Friends made while smoking dope generally remained friends till there was more pot to be smoked ,more crpets to be burned As I rolled she watched me, studying my face.
"So what do you do?" She asked me as I neatly gummed the paper.
"Nothing now, I used to work at a hotel. Kind of retired now." I answered.
"What about you?" Iasked her.
"Same thing only a different department." She said and I knew she was lying. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying I thought but then mabe she was just hiding some thing she didn’t want to share with a stranger.
The journey allabout it
The title of my book is called "The journey of life is just a beginning". It’s the story of a person called Siddhartha who sets out in search of his aim for he believes that his aim in life was not what he was doing but lay elsewhere. A chef by Profession he quits his job and sets out on this journey in the Himalayas after wandering for a few days in Delhi looking at life go past him. He is poetic and speaks in verses in the beginning but soon gets back to the language of the common man once he finds shelter at Shiva Shakti guest house in a sleepy little town in the Himalayas. Here he meets Jindu and a relationship develops between them, a male bonding so strong that when Siddhartha is released from jail he goes back to Shiv Shakti guest house and runs it for five years taking care of Jindu’s family. He also makes some good friends in this journey, one of them being Randy. Randy is a failed musician and is running away from reality. He is a drug addict and introduces Siddhartha to hashish which he quits after he has a near brush with death. Randy is a jester and he would go and team up with any body who would give him hashish to smoke.
Friendships are formed and broken. Siddhartha while staying here falls in love with a girl called Linny who is a back packer and comes every year for six months to stay in India to cut costs and smoke hashish. Siddhartha is happy when Linny makes him her spiritual Guru but this happiness is short lived and soon Siddhartha finds himself all alone, Randy taking sides with Linny.
Jindu comes to the rescue of Siddhartha at this time and Siddhartha once again finds himself doing what he does best. He becomes a partner in Jindu’s Restaurant. The business picks up but fate has other plans and Siddhartha finds himself in jail when Ram Singh, another restaurant owner from the village informs the police of Jindu’s involvement in drug trafficking. The restaurant is raided and Siddhartha finds himself in jail. For years the case drags on and in the prison he meets Randy and Vishal.
Both of them had been duped by Linny.
Randy is soon shifted to a different Jail and its Vishal that Siddhartha grows close to.
After five years in prison Siddhartha finally meets justice and is released. He meets Jindu and promises him to take care of his Family that has fallen apart with the winds of time.
After initial opposition Siddhartha with little help form Vishal is able to solve a lot of problems which mar Jindu’s family. Vishal falls in love with Jindu’s daughter who was raped and then forcibly married to Hari Singh. A divorce is arranged and he gets married to her, but their happiness is short lived as Hari Singh couldn’t take this insult. One night he manages to enter Shiv Shakti guest house and kills Saloni, Jindu’s Daughter. Vishal looses his cool and after killing Hari Singh finally goes to the gallows.
Siddhartha is once again left alone. Jindu no longer interested in business, things start to look bleak when one day Rizzla arrives. Rizzla shows Siddhartha where he had gone wrong and why he hadn’t been able to realize his aim in life . She tells him about the forces of destiny and how they guide each person.
Siddhartha realizes that while he was looking for his aim in life all this time, he actually was fulfilling it .
Siddhartha finally feels at peace and his heart stops. His last words "The journey of life is just a beginning."
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
The journey of life Chapter two
"I saw the best minds off my generation destroyed by madness,
Starving hysterical naked,
Dragging themselves
Through the Negro streets
At dawn looking for an angry fix.
Angle headed hipsters
Burning the ancient
Heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery night……"
With each passing tree my mind raced, the vibrating cushion disturbing the perfect state of bliss, wondering about life, a train journey. Each year, wonderful, adventurous, the train whistles on and so does life, both cruel to those who come in its way. Unforgiving and maligning bodies and souls, they go on, Death is inevitable.
"The barren hillock stares at the sun,
Parched fields, dying cattle, ah agony.
A farmer looks up to the sky,
Summoning rain gods, no reply.
What has fate in store, hungry children,
Beg for mercy,
God when wrote their destiny, forgot
To give them any respite, ah agony..."
As the train left the station, she calls out, eyes staring blankly in to the oblivion, seeking desperately for that hand no longer visible from the window, the support was gone never to return. The fall killed her, as she ran after her lost love.
"Till death do us part"
The shadows of the mountains grew longer, as the sun bid farewell to the earth, another night, and more food consumed, sharp pangs jolt the body, the horror of tomorrow. Another day waits on the anvil with nothing to offer, it creeps him up like a demon, bringing death and destruction, the little one cries, breaking the monotony of the night. The sky turned orange, a ray of hope arrives……
The man stood still waiting for it; he could hear the vibrations, a low whistling noise."Ah my wife, my children!", their faces haunting his vision, at 28 he had seen it all, death was the only solution. The sun rained heat and prolonged his pain, memories from the past seemed like an oasis in this desert of life. A mirage, or was it real, a whistle. The complex machinery stopped………
A man enters the compartment, wife and kids tagging along, looking at vacant upper birth he perches his two kids on top. In the commotion another man gets kicked, hell breaks loose. Abused, his ego shattered, the father stands at the door. A turmoil engulfs the kids mind, scheming and planning the downfall of his fathers nemesis he falls asleep, rudely awakened by his father as the train yet pulls in to another station, tagging along, his hero defeated, says "Any man can be a father ,a few Heroes."
Green fields, a respite from the cruel heat, tractors operating churning the guts of the earth. Food no longer a luxury, A mere necessity. Parched land, barren mountains, a different reality, yet a common ground. Children no longer hungry, play to a different tune,
Cows grazing on nimble leaves. As he stands there he seems to be thanking…
"City of gods they call it, yet people suffer,
Devdasis cry for mercy,
Widows abandoned cry for lord Krishna,
Two rupees and little rice they get in return,
God turns a blind eye,"
Destiny, Farce, fate, who knows, why they suffer. The farmer ,his children, the question lingers as rain god blesses a town,turningroads in to a slush, People cursing rain, people praying for rain only if gods were not so confused…..
As the train pulled in to the station, my mind raced to all the events that had occurred during the journey .Strange things happen when least expected .A journey through India had seemed so vague a couple of months ago now a reality. As I boarded a bus the mind wandered again, the bus pulled and stopped, and so did life, moving on a terrain filled with potholes, it didn’t budge, time has a strange way to show its existence, life is such, it doesn’t move when most needed, the engine revved up, a traffic jam, more people, insignificant mortals trying to bring in that bread. Strange smell filling up my nostrils. Half an hour passed, no deliverance, another red light, another stoppage, was it time to change course, but was there any other option.
The clicking noise broke my trance, the engine responded, the bus pulled forward, strange happenings, a five rupee coin seemed to communicate. It made the decision, it stopped and it moved, it clicked away merrily ,shouts to stop felling on deaf ears, the bus came to a grinding halt, another click, a harsher one and it started moving,money,it seemed made the world go round.
The dope heads sat in a huddle inhaling fumes, matchsticks burning fingers and mind. Eyes hollow, they stared coaxing automobiles to end their agony.Thier clothes a reminiscent of their past. Who were they, forgotten long ago, their families, a thing of the past. The cramps, a symbol time to burn the foil again, hell existed in pockets under the flyovers, demonic in appearance, they looked through his soul, searching for some sanity he looked the other way, were they at peace, a mind slave to the foil, an empty cigarette pack had its own uses, little things in life had there own uses only if they were there.
The bus screeched, tyres whining from pain fumed in anger. A Man had increased the road count, a life turned in to a mere figure, who was he,a family orphaned, a vacancy created, did he achieve what he thrived for, his brain spilled, a mind fodder for the dogs. Death in its cruelest form. A finger twitched, marking the end of a generation. The ambulance came and went, blood spill cleaned by passing vehicles. Who was he, did he have a name, a past, , did he know the last thing on his mind bore no relation to the ultimate truth. A mother waiting, wife conspiring, sons fighting.
They live in duplex flats, close to the main road, houses constructed from wood polythene, and poverty, laughter shared, the hutments continue on both sides occupying that precious real estate meant for pedestrians, like a snake each day it grows, a place to live, kids playing, evading vehicles, a mother washing clothes, yet another one cooks, a common place shared, black tar witness to there happiness and sorrows, a compromise made a small pandal holds a wedding. Loud garish film music playing on conical speakers, kids dancing to its tunes.Lifes little delights, a big event for them, an amused backpacker clicked pictures, "oh! I visited real India!" back home he would proclaim. Kids posed, an artificial smile, demand for money, constant pestering, he moves on. Were they happy, satisfied in the bliss of smelling their own excreta thought fully marking strategic positions on the road, waiting to be splattered all over the place, the torrid smell of dead fish and excreta lay heavily, a way of life. Yet another kid evades passing truck, as he runs after the ball, his mother cursing, he returns, a smile ,not artificiality, a cheer from other, the environment lightened, moving on I looked back, studying in the street light, he seemed determined to leave it, a future ,a fight was on its way…..
As the ceiling fan took the umpteenth revolution the day’s events started reappearing in front of his eyes. The contrast as strikingly different as possible.
Staring at them loneliness befriended him, As the machinery of the night churned hour after hour, sleep eluded his tormented soul, the days events filled him with remorse for not being sensitive, As a child he had often cried seeing others in pain, a complete degradation, a curse ready to destroy the little sanity, he so cherished, the demons of the night closing in, the dope heads calling out, inviting him, promising a solution he so desperately sought answers to. Sleep came but only to a tired body, the mind still wandering, asked where to go next, maybe the Himalayas had an answer.
The morning came and went, he was too tired, The night had been anything but comforting, A knock, were the dope heads real or just a figment of his imagination. Did a solution actually lay in that hollowness of mind and spirit, escapism he concluded .Another knock." room service". Ticket to Himalayas had finally arrived .The boy looked on for bakshish, handing him a tenner he studied the boys face. Life had matured him at this young age of twelve.Acook, butler, manager, who was he, a product of a night of passion, a bread earner, a drifter? , he was too tired to ask. The bus left at six and he had a whole day to experience life at close quarters.
Similar hutments littered the clear spaces, more misery, yet a common feature, that wonderful smile, some sense of achievement. "Should I ask them?" he wondered, yet a fear of being mobbed stopped him from approaching those happy souls. A beggar approached him, hair turned brown, his filthy appearance assured that his target customer parted with enough booty. It seemed he had not taken a bath in days, the skin burned to a crisp black. It looked as if he hadn’t had food in days .Moved Siddhartha tried to give him a fifty paisa coin. "Do you think I can buy anything with this" As he threw the coin back at his face. Awe struck as Siddhartha looked at the beggar he chose the choicest of abuses increasing his vocabulary.
People looked at him sympathetically, Naked he stood, his clothes no longer able to hide his shame, showing mercy to a fellow human being was no longer a virtue, he realized.
An act of kindness had turned in to an act of self defense nasty reminder of being abused in public.
He thought of the beggar, Perhaps a dope head pursuing his occupation frustrated at not being able to collect enough for his daily dose of drugs. Maybe it was the cramps that had returned asking him to burn the foil which no longer existed. That night he might suffer for not being able to defy reality, his demonic friends guarding their loot smoking away in hell, the whiffs of that burning foil enticing him, calling out, like a fallen angel he would suffer the agony.
It was time to go ,the bus conductor calling out for single passengers baggage secured ,he boarded ,only to discover he was placed in the front cabin, his next destination, a popular hill station amongst newly weds. Sleep as always had plans to elude him and this being the perfect setting he decided to enjoy the journey, little did he knew what fate had in store for him.
The journey was anything but comforting, the bumps coming at regular intervals jolting every bone in his body. Indian film music belted out continuously from torn speakers. Playing it slow was not an option as it kept the driver from dozing off. Cigarette smoke of a different kind filled in the cabin making his head go dizzy. As the driver took puffs ,a cold chill ran down his spine ,the horror of meeting with an accident being evident ,he knew that he may meet God in person sooner than he had thought off .The mind wandered off to the sushi bars in Japan serving stone fish ,a fish so toxic that it could kill a person in a few minutes ,why then people customary say there good byes before eating the fish. Putting your life in the hands of the chef was an idea not many people would like to do, the chef specially trained in the art of cleaning fish, what if he had a fight in the morning ,what were the chances of survival, what about the person sitting next to you waving goodbye as you take a bite out of your stone fish .Was it the thrill that made people eat it ,or was there some kind of a death wish going on .What a terrific way to die, at least you died on a full stomach.
Sleep finally acted as deliverance and when he got up fog was covering up the road.
Journey in the hills beginning, it was cold and damp ,but it lightened up his spirit ,the majestic mountains challenging his wandered spirit, Coaxing him to conquer them.
The bus stopped at a road side tea stall as the hawker shouted, displaying there wares. A mountain stream pouring down from nowhere, acted as a water source, for, that sweet tea he ordered. The music of the stream played in perfect harmony with the sun playing hide and seek with clouds .The mountains looking on at the game with wisdom that of saints ,smiling at this innocent display by natures most powerful elements .A far cry from the hustle bustle of the city ,it was a different world ,nature at its best .The sun putting on a different face at different places .In Bombay it had risen with a sophistication ,a sense of priorty,an urgency to catch the 8.45 Virar express ,and here it was ,having all the time in the world to play that little game with the clouds ,hiding behind mountains, challenging the clouds to catch him .
The bus winded through the thin curvaceous road, like an insect testing his luck climbing up the leg of a saint engrossed deeply in meditation, irritating him, tickling him. The saint opens up his eyes, smiles .The bus moves on, Destination visible, it was time to look forward to a new adventure.
As the bus entered the under belly of a sleepy town, a swarm of pimps brokering accommodation entered the bus like bees to a hive .Each holding a brochure of the so called hotel he was employed for. "Two hundred rupees, hot water." They bargained, targeting the newly weds and back- packers. Living on the main road an idea popular with the newly weds didn’t really entice me much and getting hold of my luggage I decided to walk .Walk in to the mountains, walk in to the underbelly of the city commercialized to an extent where even an attic doubled up as a guest room during summers bringing in that much needed cash so important to survive the winters.
The town freshly snowed, a haven for skiing attracted lots of sports enthusiast each year looking for virgin snow fields challenging the Gods and mountains alike .A mountaineering and skiing institute boasted of best skiers in the country stood right next to river Beas .They say if heaven was on earth it was this town ,but before this Kashmir had this title, before it was ravaged by the demons called homo sapiens .Today battered it is just a reminder of those past years ,but in a way its good as nature gets that so precious time to recollect ,to rejunavate from all that humans have so wisely plundered in the name of economics.
The journey of life is just a beginning chapter one
8.45 am ,The train pulled in to dock yard station ,a local train ,its iron wheels groaning under the pressure of thousand of human beings pressing to be in office on time .As he lugged forward to grasp the iron bar ,his foot missed the footboard ,dragged he managed that step and was on the train .As he made way through the compartment ,people cursing ,he stepped on feet and egos alike .A man pressed on to his chest making his lungs to collapse and as he gasped for air ,he cursed his luck for not being able to leave that highly paid job he was in to .
Life had not been easy, money no longer a necessity had become an objective of survival. Adventure was to get on that train .When he had come to Mumbai, people had warned him about the 8.45 Virar, a train notorious for the heavy traffic commuting daily on it, getting a place on it was a feat for the brave, a war, People got goose pimples just by the thought of getting on .Schedules made to avoid traveling on it. First class were no different, egos getting large, stomachs even larger, he had never missed it, an achievement of some kind .Crumpled clothes, a mark of victory. Thousands boarded it ,each day ,People playing cards ,celebrating birthdays ,ladies compartments a little less crowded acting as dressing rooms .A way of life .But life should have been better ,an option he could no longer decide on.
As he got down standing in a queue that started from the overhead bridge, he joined a few hundred men waiting for the same bus that would take him to the same destination as these men. He spotted a few of his office friends much ahead in the line, but then every body seemed to know every body, People smiled shake hands as they moved on to join the queue at the rear end .As he stood there watching the world go past him, he felt sick, sick of a life that had nothing to offer, no aim, am I a drifter? a question he had often asked himself .As his mind asked him the same question for the umpteenth time he decided it was time for action ,time to board for the bus and head for office .
His office, a kitchen of a five star hotel, he had worked hard to reach up to this position, working as a junior sous chef, he had mastered the art of the knife, today was no different, a melee of choicest of spices and abuses ,life had been unforgiving ,working for twelve hours a day , he cooked ,made sauces ,wielded his knife at trainees ,abusing them, taking out his frustration . As the day turned in to evening , he placed order after order ,the sequence coming naturally to him .Working in the hotel had its own advantages and food was no longer a quest , Savoring the smorgasbord he in the beginning had thanked God for a job which satisfied his creative self ,It had been over four years ,three on his current position .Promotion seemed to be a remote possibility ,he had seen his juniors rise .A promotion meant moving to a smaller property ,something he could not consider as he had loved this city .Creativity that, at one time intrigued him ,now bored him .A standard had been set and all he did was to follow the guidelines ,the Executive chef looking on.
The work left him exhausted and the adventure of traveling back on a relatively empty train would Mean he would be able to catch some sleep on the way back, A habit he had to dispose when once he ended up in a railway yard, after he had fallen asleep, only to waken up by the cleaning lady .The job being standard routine, he had now got used to it and he now no longer would look up to the challenge. But what was his goal?, his aim in life, He always had this feeling that he was meant for greater things, but here he was stuck in a mediocre job that paid him well.
Life had not been easy, money no longer a necessity had become an objective of survival. Adventure was to get on that train .When he had come to Mumbai, people had warned him about the 8.45 Virar, a train notorious for the heavy traffic commuting daily on it, getting a place on it was a feat for the brave, a war, People got goose pimples just by the thought of getting on .Schedules made to avoid traveling on it. First class were no different, egos getting large, stomachs even larger, he had never missed it, an achievement of some kind .Crumpled clothes, a mark of victory. Thousands boarded it ,each day ,People playing cards ,celebrating birthdays ,ladies compartments a little less crowded acting as dressing rooms .A way of life .But life should have been better ,an option he could no longer decide on.
As he got down standing in a queue that started from the overhead bridge, he joined a few hundred men waiting for the same bus that would take him to the same destination as these men. He spotted a few of his office friends much ahead in the line, but then every body seemed to know every body, People smiled shake hands as they moved on to join the queue at the rear end .As he stood there watching the world go past him, he felt sick, sick of a life that had nothing to offer, no aim, am I a drifter? a question he had often asked himself .As his mind asked him the same question for the umpteenth time he decided it was time for action ,time to board for the bus and head for office .
His office, a kitchen of a five star hotel, he had worked hard to reach up to this position, working as a junior sous chef, he had mastered the art of the knife, today was no different, a melee of choicest of spices and abuses ,life had been unforgiving ,working for twelve hours a day , he cooked ,made sauces ,wielded his knife at trainees ,abusing them, taking out his frustration . As the day turned in to evening , he placed order after order ,the sequence coming naturally to him .Working in the hotel had its own advantages and food was no longer a quest , Savoring the smorgasbord he in the beginning had thanked God for a job which satisfied his creative self ,It had been over four years ,three on his current position .Promotion seemed to be a remote possibility ,he had seen his juniors rise .A promotion meant moving to a smaller property ,something he could not consider as he had loved this city .Creativity that, at one time intrigued him ,now bored him .A standard had been set and all he did was to follow the guidelines ,the Executive chef looking on.
The work left him exhausted and the adventure of traveling back on a relatively empty train would Mean he would be able to catch some sleep on the way back, A habit he had to dispose when once he ended up in a railway yard, after he had fallen asleep, only to waken up by the cleaning lady .The job being standard routine, he had now got used to it and he now no longer would look up to the challenge. But what was his goal?, his aim in life, He always had this feeling that he was meant for greater things, but here he was stuck in a mediocre job that paid him well.
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