I must make a note on the following text. This is a chapter of my book, therefore if some information seems confusing to you It’s been explained in previous chapters. This does however remain a true encounter of my first experience of India. This is not listed as a chapter of my book as it’s still in development. All these events took place in the year 2000.
Chapter 6
The trip to Calcutta was not a long one but it was beautiful. The eternal haze that seemed to sit over Bangladesh was gone and we were driving on a small tree lined road almost the entire time. It was pleasant and the hour until we started reaching city limits was pleasant. I was immediately not impressed with Calcutta. The large roads were in decent shape but everything seemed dirty. The buildings were old and crumbling and the streets just seemed busy. I was taken back at one point where there were three or four cows just lying in the middle of this major throughway and cars were driving around them but not trying to move them. I knew cows were a sacred animal to the Hindus and therefore most Indian’s but I didn’t realize they’d have reign of the city streets as well! As we drove on for what seemed like ages I was delighted to see the odd white people and by the time the driver stopped and people got out I was happy to have already seen more foreigners than I had in the previous three weeks. The problem now was being on a random city street with my bag and no idea where to go.
Middle of the day and walking randomly down the street with my bag I wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t long before I found a hotel and asked about the prices. At fifteen dollars I night I continued until I found a smaller hotel. I made my way up the stairs and was told I could come back at two and the room would be four hundred rupees, nearly ten dollars, this didn’t please me but it was a better price and I asked if I could see a room. Just off the lobby the man approached a door and knocked, then asked permission to enter. Inside was a large German man and a young Indian boy packing the man’s bag. I uncomfortably walked around the room looking at the bathroom and then getting out as quickly as possible, one never wants to make assumptions but I was glad to be away from the fat German and that hotel.
Further down the street I saw two white people ahead of me and decided to stop them, they were dressed very casually, looking almost like hippies, and they told me to continue three streets down and take a right, there I would find Sutter Street and all the cheap hotels I could dream of. Wow, could it really be that I was so lucky, to be let off in the right neighbourhood and certain now to meet some other Westerners like myself. I glided along the next three streets to find myself at the top of Sutter Street and started on my way down. Straight away I could see this was a backpacker’s road, there were men coming up to me straight away asking me if in needed a room or a taxi or anything at all. I suddenly needed a moment to breath, I’d not encountered anything like this in Bangladesh and I could see no matter how similar India felt it was going to be vastly different. As I walked on attempting to ignore the four men surrounding me I saw one hotel after another, non looking very impressive but quite a few of them nonetheless. Eventually one of the men stood in front of me and said he had a room for one hundred rupees, a mere two dollars, and that I should follow him. I told him I would give him no money, which didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest and walked with him into the very next hostel.
The man at the front desk smiled at me and led me to a windowless room with a single bed and an attached bathroom. It looked neither clean nor nice but I said fine, at that price I was happy to have a room and didn’t want to deal with searching for a room. I told him I would come down and sign in as soon as I took a shower. He didn’t look pleased but left the room and minutes later I was on the street. With all these people around I knew there was no way I wouldn’t meet someone to talk with, and the first restaurant filled with Westerners I saw I went into and sat down with excitement and English voices all around me.
It wasn’t long before I was sitting there chatting away with an English couple and a few others around our tables. It felt great telling of Bangladesh and just to speak and hear other people speak in a fluent manner. It seemed that few people stayed in Calcutta long as everyone was talking about moving north to Darjeeling and the cold or south towards Tamil Nadu and Kerala. I’d never heard of anywhere in India so simply listened and quickly decided if Susan and James would let me travel with them south then I would join. They were talking about going to a small costal town called Puri, the day after tomorrow. I could see and feel their hesitance in telling me I could come along but decided to ignore it already deciding it would be good to be out of a big city and knowing that as soon as we were in Puri I would connect with people that were happy to have my company.
The next day we headed to the train station together just to get our tickets for that night. James had a book of train times and we knew there was an evening train that would get us into Puri the next morning. The crazy thing I’d discovered, although not yet experienced obviously, was that the trains in India take forever. The country is not so big as people tend to imagine, but with the infrastructure being so poor its travelling times are double and triple what you would expect in Europe, therefore even though we would only be travelling some 200 kilometres it was scheduled to take eleven hours.
Getting the ticket proved easily enough and that evening we met at the platform having spent the day by myself wondering around this old and interesting city but one that is also dirty and congested therefore not attracting me much as I’d just spent three weeks in dirt and traffic. The trains have three main types of class: First which offers air conditioning and apparently bedding as well. Second, which seems to be the travellers favourite, is also offering beds; three high the middle one folds down in the daytime so that the bottom one can be used as a bench for all, which is why you want the Upper Berth where no one will bother you the entire journey. The beds are slightly cushioned and in a long dirty blue indestructible upholster. All three of us managed to get upper bunks but this meant we were not in the same area it turned out. Getting onto the train one discovers little sections of six beds, three facing three and two on the outer wall. In this one has back to back beds wasting the minimum space as possible while still offering some comfort, there is also toilets at either end. The third class was apparently just wooden benches and didn’t offer assigned seating, therefore first come first serve and as there were no limit on ticket allocation if you were left standing or hanging out the door the entire journey then so was the case.
Before boarding the train I was amazed at the station itself, looking nothing like the British version it was so styled in there seemed to be an entire world amongst the trains. People had set up stalls selling everything from Omelettes to bread with fried vegetables, biscuits and other little snacks and of course cigarettes, I was back in the land of Walls and Gold Flake. I had found a cigarette called Scissors that came in a ten pack and only cost ten rupees, they were a bit harsh but I knew I’d become accustomed to them at that price! I settled myself on my upper berth and wondered what I would do for the journey.
As with so many firsts the time flew by faster than I would have guessed between trying strange food from people that came on and off the train with their specialities and looking out the window at the green and sometimes amazing landscape once daytime came. I slept better than I thought possible and as we came to the last stop, I was ready to leave the train but also ready to take another one without hesitation. I had not spoken to James or Susan the entire time and knew that once we got into town and a hotel it was unlikely we would speak again. They were into each other and not interested in anyone else it seemed, I was only getting in the way apparently. But what did I care, walking the small quiet street of Puri trying to find the Blue Dragon I was happy they had brought me to a place full of peace and quite and finally some fresh air.
Having left the state of West Bengal I was now in Orissa, a small but beautiful state according to the people I was quickly befriending at the hotel. For a hundred rupees again I got my room, this time on the ground floor it was a large affair with white washed walls, a large double bed with mozzie net and attached bathroom. I was now used to not having hot water and with it being so hot outside I had little interest in anything else. How this little village became to be a tourist spot I have no idea but the few beggars seemed to quickly giving up on me and I enjoyed walking around and down to the beach. I’d decided in my first days in Bangladesh that I wouldn’t give anything to beggars. I understand they are worse off than me, but I worked hard for my money and it would be too easy to give it all away. My thoughts on this have been enforced since seeing people in Calcutta give money to one kid and moments latter having fifteen around them and never being happy with the amount you gave in the first place. On my second day an old couple that hung out outside the gates of the hotel surprised me and got me to give them a rupee, this didn’t please me but I’ve learnt from it so I can’t complain.
The beach sadly was nothing to write home about, quite large and the sand seemed generally clean but only about ten minutes down the beach is a fishing village that I decided to check out this morning and it made me glad I’d never gone into the ocean. It seems that as these people live in small hay or some sort of long brown grass huts there is naturally no electricity or indoor plumbing. As it was walking through this area of perhaps twenty huts the children ran out when they saw me and were amazed at the pictured in my India Weekly, a business magazine that couldn’t possibly be of any interest to them even if they could read, it was simply the glossy pictures that they weren’t use to. Getting away from them after a decent struggle I managed my way to the beach and the many fishing boats lining the beach towards my road and hotel. I started off walking without looking down till ahead of me I saw a man with his trousers down squatting in the middle of the beach. I looked down and realized that I was in the middle of a mine field and had some how been lucky so far. On all sides of me for perhaps a hundred meters were piles of faeces. The fishing village clearly came out here to do their natural deeds, then waiting for the tide to come in twice a day would naturally flush it away. This made enough sense to me but it was still quite gross for me to be walking through a large toilet and made the beautiful sea in front of me somehow seem far less attractive. Being in Puri, bullshitting with people, hanging out doing nothing and simply enjoying myself I finally felt like I was on holiday. It was the first time since I’d left New York a month ago that I was relaxed, yet four days after my arrival, feeling like I shouldn’t get too comfortable I headed to the mountains and a hot springs that one of the guys at the hostel recommended to me.
Two busses and six hours later I was somewhere in the middle of a forest in the middle of Orissa. I had not seen a tourist all day long and when the driver told me to get off I was standing by the side of a road looking at a few buildings in front of me but nothing else. I walked to the building and found that they did have rooms but they were four hundred rupees. Knowing I had no choice I said that was fine and was shown a room complete with TV, Fridge, Air Conditioning, and the best part a small swimming pool. Walking into the bathroom everything looked normal with the toilet and shower, however going into the next room there was a two meter by two meter pool sitting there full of water, this was the hot spring water, pumped straight into my room! I now really wished I had a woman with me! I paid the woman and walked back out onto the street, there was a restaurant at the hotel but I didn’t want to spend yet more money seeing how the room itself was my daily budget but I knew there was little options in reality and went to take some food before settling down in my tub and watching TV for the night, today I was spoiling myself, tomorrow wouldn’t be the same.
Three days later having taken my time in moving further south I found myself in a Red Cross Hostel in Chennai, also known as Madras in Tamil Nadu, the largest city in the East cost. I had not stayed in a hostel to date but looking through the book all the hotels seemed really expensive so I figured it was the only good option. The room was large having twenty single beds, ten on each side and most of the people were quite nice. It is in this large room that my style of travel would forever change. I met a French guy who’d been travelling around India for the past few years; he was a real hippy type and seemed a bit lost in the head but a nice guy. I talked to him along with all the other people in the room and took little notice of him till I saw his bag. I’d been caring around my half full army duffel bag for weeks now wondering why I had it. Inside were many things I felt I didn’t need and in seeing this man with a school child’s backpack and that’s all I decided I had to be like that. The very next night after spending the day with a Polish guy, Miro, the doom was nearly full and I emptied my bag onto my bed and started giving stuff away. I had shirts, trousers, jackets, travel guilds, all sorts of crap that I didn’t want. I even had an electric razor that I’d not used once! By the time the night was up I’d gotten rid of everything I didn’t want while gaining a small backpack one of the guys didn’t really use and a small bag for disposable contact lenses that worked perfectly for all the little things I still had. I was amazingly pleased with myself, and the next day when Miro and I went to the post office and a woman outside the Post put my shoes in a box then hand sowed a strong piece of cloth over the box to keep any thieves out I handed her twenty rupees and sent the Timberland boots that had only been worn once in five weeks to my mother. I felt so free I couldn’t believe it.
Miro was on his way to the Andaman and Micobar Islands, a two days boat journey from Chennai many people in the hostel were either coming or going from there and boat tickets were incredibly hard to come by. I decided to follow him and therefore we spent four days together trying to get tickets before I gave up and he would later sneak on a boat and make it successfully. There was one incredible thing about Miro that I shouldn’t have followed him on. He had a stomach that was strong as iron. Eating in only local restaurants was something I’d slowly started to do along with trying the street food but he also drank the water the restaurants served while I continued to drink bottled drinking water. Knowing him to have been in India for two months now and having never gotten sick from this I decided I would also start drinking this water.
For some reason I got stuck in Chennai and stayed a week. Perhaps I would have stayed longer had it not been for two factors. The Red Cross had told all of us as we’d arrived that on the 17th they were completely booked out already. We all agreed, I thinking I’d never be here that long as Chennai really has very little to offer except for being a large dirty city with plenty of pollution and so it was the night of the 16th came before I knew it. That afternoon I started to feel a bit funny and by night when Miro and I were walking back to the hostel I stopped off at a chemist an got some fever medicine. I’ve never been big on pills or drugs but I felt very cold and it was nearly 35c outside. Pills in hand we went back and for most of the night the room were kind enough to turn the fans off. That night I took many trips to the toilet I’m sure but I only remember one in particular. There was a Mexican girl in the dorm, she clamed she was only seventeen though nobody completely believed her as she was a bit funny in the head anyway. So I’m up while everyone’s already sleeping and I see her standing there in the corridor. She tells me she’s going to swallow the whole clove of garlic as it’s meant to keep the mosquitoes away. I said okay, a bit doped up on the pills and fatigue and went to the toilet once again. When I came out she was nearly turning blue and I asked her what was going on? She has not bitten into the clove and simply tried to swallow it where it then got lodged in her throat and I found her there trying to caught or do anything to get it out. Together we managed to get her to spit it up and very breathless and red in the face she wandered back to bed in a daze.
When morning came I found my mattress was soaked through as were the three blankets I’d used during the night. I felt much better although still not very good as Miro and I went out into the burning sun to find new accommodation. I was not yet sure what I was going to do, but feeling quite under the weather I was going to stay one more day before moving on, now that the little group was breaking up it’d be easier to go. Knowing that I’d sweat like crazy the night before and had diarrhea and it being very hot outside I was trying to drink quite a bit of water. We walked around for an hour, finding only two hotels both which were booked out and were on our way back to the hostel when I suddenly threw up right in the middle of the road. There had been no warning and apparently no food in my stomach either as what came out of my mouth was purely water with a spatter of blood at the end which scared me quite a bit. I got back to the hostel, got my new small bag together and laid on a couch for awhile quite tired and hot not sure what to do. My throat started to swell almost immediately from throwing up so it was becoming increasingly difficult to swallow. One of the women had been going on about a small town called Mabalapuram for the past two days, apparently it was only a two hour bus journey and on the coast. I remember her talking about the Blue Diamond hotel and wondered more and more if I could make the two hour journey, I had to go somewhere after all.
Sitting on that bus to Mapalapuram I really wasn’t certain about my decision, with a light head and a painful stomach and throat I survived the two hour trip bravely thinking this is what travelling is all about. Very unlike me the first rickshaw driver off the bus I took having first told him my hotel name and working out a price. I knew it was a walkable distance but not in my state and in mid day heat. He first tried to bring me to the wrong hotel and then after a bit of arguing brought me twenty meters further up to the right one. I was in no mood for his clams on making two stops or any other bullshit and hastily threw him the money looking at the garden in front of me and the big blue house casting a shadow over it and myself, a much welcome shadow I must add. My hundred rupee room was not impressive, a small darkish box with a windowless toilet but I didn’t care. I knew there was a trophy room on the top floor but it was full and I couldn’t imagine climbing stairs anyway I was tired and felt like shit therefore went straight into bed upon my arrival.
A few hours later I awoke with the sun still out. I slowly walked to the end of the strip and found myself at the ocean and a single restaurant by the ocean. Not being able or interested in smoking or drinking my standard Coke, I ordered a soda water, figuring the bubbles would do me good and a cheese sandwich, not hungry but thinking food, and non Indian food might be a good idea. For the next hour I sat barely touching my meal and eventually was ready to go back to sleep. Across from the hotel was a Western woman selling hammocks from parachute material that she had made up. I talked with her some time and of my condition, in turn she told me where the doctor that she trusted was, only just down the road, and wished me well as I headed for bed.
Twelve hours later I woke with a start and a painful headache. I knew it was morning by the light coming through my window but didn’t remember anything of the night before, I had slept like a log and now felt all the worse for it somehow. As I lifted my head off the pillow I sat up and was unable to move. The sound of my heartbeat was suddenly in my eardrums and pounding on my temples as though someone was using a hammer. After sitting completely still for a few minutes I moved my head to look at the toilet and the hammers came back. With every movement the hammers would come back and it took me five minutes just to get the two meters to the toilet for my morning release. I knew then I had to go to the doctors. Putting on my black Stetson I’d gotten while driving through Kansas I slowly made my way to the garden and had to sit for quite some time before being able to move again. It was now nine and I hoped the doctor would be in, and that I could find her clinic. If I was generally hesitant to visit the chemist it was tenfold for a doctor. My walk there in the morning heat was slow and painful, as people in their shops yelled out for me to come inside and have a look I never took my eyes from the pavement in front of me and tried to tread as lightly on the pavement as possible, the hammers were on my temples at all moments but at least there was the chance to lessen the pain.
Sometime later sitting in the small dingy doctors waiting room I didn’t move at all and was glad it wasn’t long before she welcomed me into her surgery where I told her my symptoms and she took some blood thinking it was probably Typhoid and told me to come back around four that afternoon. I had some antibiotics in the mean time and was told to rest, this I did without hesitation. Having not left my room upon my return I was back on the street and to her clinic at four. I racked my brain in wondering if the doctors in New York had given me Typhoid shots and in looking through my paperwork it seemed that indeed they did not. So there you go, and certainly my drinking the water was the cause, or so I felt and she suspected but could not medically confirm. I was told I had a light case, but a case indeed of Typhoid, told to rest for the coming days and be sure to take my entire run of antibiotics I paid her twenty dollars and went back to bed. At least now I knew what was wrong with me and that it wasn’t malaria or something incurable!
The next days passed easily enough and it was not long before I could move about and was again enjoying being alive. I moved into the trophy room at the top of the house with a beautiful view of the ocean and plenty of space and even decided to go all out and buy a big two person hammock from Dream Weavers, the hammock lady that had told me of the doctor. I was still at a bit of a loss as to what I was doing in India and decided that going to Sri Lanka would be a good idea. Having been told there were boats going from a city called Thiruvananthapuram (Tra-Van-Dra-Pour-Ham) on the southern coast in the next state known as Kerala. I soon made my way back to Chennai and brought my ticket to Thiruvananthapuram for that evening. At nine o clock I was surprised to see the train already there, one quickly discovers in India that the trains run late more often than not, sometimes by hours, but as this was the starting point for the train luck was on my side. Finding my carriage and berth I got comfortable and watched a French couple below me talking and wondering if they were both taking this train as well. The woman was quite beautiful and from what I could understand they were saying goodbye to each other, it quickly became apparent to me that she was on the train and he was staying in Chennai for whatever reason.
Never one to be shy around women when it came to talking as the night train began to move I considered how I would start to talk to this woman. She then climbed up into the bunk opposite mine and I knew it would be easier than I’d thought. We talked into the night and continued in the morning. She was a school teacher named Veronica and sexy indeed, but sadly she had only left her boyfriend for a five day holiday on her way to a small city by the Indian Ocean called Varkala. The idea of going to this town with this beautiful French woman appealed more and more to me and eventually I asked her if I could join, I was meant be going four hours further than her and therefore I needed to do nothing with my ticket. She said it would be a pleasure to have my company and even though I knew I had no chance of doing anything with her it’d be a pleasure to be in her company I figured.
As soon as we arrived in Varkala I somehow knew that I’d finally found a place that I might want to stay for awhile. The bulk of the tourist city was on the face of a large cliff overlooking the ocean. The town itself was nowhere near this area and therefore it was something like a tourist village with restaurants, café’s, hotels and many of them being owned or run by Westerners. We walked around and did a whole lot of nothing just meeting people and hanging out; it was just what we both needed.
Having already given away all my guild books finding them more annoying than useful; Veronica had spent much of the train journey with her nose in hers. One of the things she did find was that in Kerala there was a large backwater tour that one could do. Taking a boat through the delta waters either for a half day or full, stopping to have lunch on banana leaves and just a relaxing day on the water. We decided to do this and two days after arriving in Varkala we got up early and getting a rickshaw to the train to another rickshaw finally made it to the pier in somewhere by nine. The small boat holding thirty of us backpackers started off and with a seating area below and outside, plus people sitting on the roof of the indoor area everyone was getting comfortable for a long sunny day. The area was silent, palm trees and other foliage surrounded us for as far as the eye could see and there were even the occasional houses and small towns set up on the banks of the delta. Before the lunch stop we started to see large fishing nets and their bamboo frames. It really looked like something used only hundreds of years ago and sadly we never saw anyone operating them but by their quantity, half looking like they were for catching and half for farming I’m sure it worked. A simple meal was served to us on our banana leaves, and as I sat by the water smoking I met a large Indian man that I’d noticed earlier on the boat, sticking out by being the only non white if nothing else. It turned out Harj was from Brittan by birth but had lots of family still in India and was here on holiday. We spoke about London and all sorts of things and both Veronica and I enjoyed talking with him and smoking his Marlboro Lights. It was made abundantly clear that he was not doing the backpacker thing as he told us about the flights he was taking around the country and the five star hotels he’d been and was staying in. The funniest part about it was he’d hired a taxi for the entire day, to bring him to the pier in the morning and then follow the boat by the shore just in case he got bored and wanted to get off at some point, and once he pointed this out we did occasionally see his taxi waiting at a landing with a content but bored looking Indian man standing next to the car.
The trip didn’t end until nearly five, it had been a long day in the sun and I could feel my legs burning as we all made our way onto the streets of something and thought about how we were going to get home, now being considerably further north than we’d started. Harj at this point was kind enough to offer to drive us further south, at least to a train station that would not be out of his way but further in our direction and seeing the sky quickly turning dark and the chance to save lots of time through this taxi journey we readily accepted. I sat in the front seat while Harj and Veronica sat in the back and I spent most of my time looking back at them being too scared to watch the road ahead of me. I’d noticed before driving in rickshaws or sitting on busses that the roads appeared to have no rules whatsoever and I often thought I would die but I’d never been on a busy road at night and not much enjoying night driving even in America there was no way I could look forward now and keep my sanity. It was pitch black out when the driver let us off at a station and told us a train should come to take us back to Varkala from there. I had taken Harjs’ business card knowing that I may one day be back in London and we said thank you to this exuberant Indian man.
Two days later I was sad to see Veronica go as I took a new way out to the beach and experienced first hand just how fast everything could change in life. I was walking along a back lane to the cliff face a little ways out of town. Veronica and I had done no exploring really and were quite content to go down to the beach a few times and spend far too much time in the restaurants talking with people till all hours of the night. It was the people and the serenity of this place that gave me no desire to leave as I walked along a few houses to find the cliff face. As I passed in between two standard looking concrete houses I suddenly heard Louis Armstrong, in a country where all one hears is Ben Harper and Tracy Chapman followed by whatever other big mainstream hits are around Louis Armstrong is a rare gem. It was coming from the house on my right, I was walking between two houses and this blue house with a large thatched ceiling was playing this lovely music. At first I thought it was a restaurant above the main house. As with most houses in Varkala there was only the single ground floor but many people used their roofs for laundry or anything really, and on this one they’d build a massive palm leaf cover, effectively a second roof that would keep out all rain and heat. Looking up at the house there was a great urge to climb the stairs and have a look, a boy standing in the garden of the other house I summoned and he told me it was a regular house, owned by Westerners. This being said I took my chances and walked up the stairs, after all, anyone listening to Louis Armstrong on a sunny afternoon can’t be all that bad!
Tepidly making my way up the stairs along the front of the house the music got louder and in my view appeared a small family, a man, woman and child sitting on the floor in the middle of this ceiling talking. As I appeared before them they looked up and the man asking with an American accent, who I was. Not knowing how to respond or what to say I started the worst way possible, with a lie. Claiming I didn’t know it was a private house I immediately began to retreat down the stairs and would have successfully had he not stopped me with his inviting words to come and sit with them. I felt like an intruder at first upon their grand rooftop terrace but as I took in my surroundings and the kindness of those around me I began to settle a bit. The ceiling was in fact massive, a two tiered structure, allowing for even more air to pass through just near the top peak while still not allowing rain water to penetrate. There were three sets of fans and even a few light bulbs hanging but not on. There was a bed stuck in the corner next to what looked like a little shed, probably housing the circuits for the electricity that’d been pumped up here and allowed a small stereo to play the Louis Armstrong CD. Darrell had been born in New Jersey but coming out to India a few years earlier had met and fallen in love with Schulli, an Israeli. They had now lived here for over a year with their two year old girl and a host of friends that would come and go like the wind. Once I got comfortable enough I asked to hang up my hammock which I’d gotten in the habit of caring everywhere with me in it’s little draw string pouch and was soon between two posts caught up in conversation with Darrell ranging all subjects that would last well into the night. Where some people never stopped talking and bored you to tears this man kept me aptly interested and confused about almost everything he said! Clearly an intelligent man he was the first Spiritualist I’d ever met. Nothing like the Born Again Christian, Tim, I’d lived with in New York who subtly wanted to turn you into his beliefs; this man simply wanted to share his wealth of knowledge. As he spoke about the mannerisms of the universe and the complexities of the Bible and other ancient stories from the Greeks to the Christians to the Indians and any number of other sources I sat for hours as in a trance. With the babe, Gaya and mother long gone downstairs the night was quickly coming to an end and I wanted more than anything to move into this crazy mans house, or should I say I wanted to live on this open air rooftop with the palm trees and ocean as my view.
Darrell had known already that my entry into his life was on a lie, a fact I apologized for and he aloud for; he also knew that I wanted to live here. A keen observer indeed after a bit of consultation with Schulli, for he wasn’t an entirely stupid man, he came back and invited me exactly what I wanted. As I made my way down the cliff face path soon after to see if anyone was still up and about before I went to bed I was happy and thought that I could certainly make Varkala my home for awhile.
That very next morning I woke up and packed my small bag and checked out of the hotel. If I’d though about finding a new hotel yesterday I certainly didn’t expect to find a free house to live in until we tired of each other. I was really happy with the fact that I would be living on the roof as well, there was already one woman living downstairs with Darrell and the family, I didn’t meet her but I heard about her, an Israeli as well named Eva. The weeks in Varkala started to fly by. I would wake in the morning to the birds and the rising sun often having only gone to bed a few hours earlier. For some reason a group of us had gotten in the habit of staying up until three or four in the morning, often city in a clearing near my house over looking the ocean and talking while the town slept. Much like all the other sea side towns I’d been in this had once been a strong fishing community, but with the introduction of tourism the fishermen had moved off the main beach and onto a smaller beach about a kilometre further down. They didn’t use the ocean as a toilet and many had stopped fishing altogether by selling their land to hotel or restaurant developers. All on a very small level but still being a lot of money for these families. At night sitting on the cliff especially once the town went to bed and if the moon wasn’t too bright one had to try hard to distinguish between fishing boat and star as they merged together on the ocean. It was truly amazing to look out at sea knowing the lights on the water were fishing boats and the millions of stars above were more visible than so many other places on earth.
Darrell was a Spiritualist I’ve told you, and perhaps I should explain this a bit further. I wouldn’t clam to know a lot about such people but having lived in Mt Shasta and being in Varkala for close to a month now I started to understand some things, suddenly Morgan’s father, Franklyn was seeming less and less like a nut case! Darrell never stopped talking, this much was true. I don’t know where he got his store of knowledge from, and was never quite sure how they survived living in India all this time without working but he always had plans and at some point in his life some of them must have worked. What he did talk about and what did sink in was his theory on how the universe works.
The Universe According to Darrell went something like this: if you ask or demand something of the Universe it has to answer. Now how do I explain all of this without sounding like a complete nut myself! The belief that if you do well to others good will fall upon you is a wide spread belief, certainly one I vouch for. In Darrell’s eyes he took this a bit further in saying that anything you need in life the Universe, or God if you prefer that term will provide for you. In this book I use the term God and will henceforth replace Universe with God. If you ask God for something, being clear in your mind and heart what it is you want God can not refuse. It is the way of the world that he must provide for you. This does not mean if you ask for a million dollars he will hand it down to you, but it does imply that he will lead you along the path to the million if you choose to work hard and recognize the signs that are in front of you. He spoke of the way we use words as well. By saying to God that you really need a million dollars he will provide you with that need. All you have asked for is to need something, you have not put out a positive message. You must know it in your heart. If I know that tomorrow will be a good day then indeed its chances are much higher. If I need tomorrow to be a good day I’m showing no confidence in God that it will be a good day, I’m simply asking for hope, for want, I’m creating a new desire and nothing more. In being positive and treating everything in life as though its already yours then indeed God and the Universe will provide, it has to. You control your own destiny, your fate, therefore if you are conscious of yourself and your actions there is nothing the Universe can do but accept your will and give it to you. People go to God asking for everything and nothing all at once without realizing it. There is no good in going to God only in a time of need, but have him in your life and heart at all times, this will certainly give you a better chance at lasting happiness. If I go to sleep every night and thank God for the nice day, and tell him that I know tomorrow will be a great day as well then I’ve set a certain vibe in motion already. I know that tomorrow will be great, it doesn’t mean that everything will go perfect, indeed there may be a few hiccups but the day will be great and I will enjoy it because I said it would be and God has responded. If, I go to bed and talk to God and tell him about how shitty my day was and how I’m sure tomorrow will bring more of the same shit as everyday seems to be the same; am I not cursing myself right from the get go. I go to sleep expecting tomorrow and everyday henceforth to suck. How can I possibly get anything else with this being my attitude. I’ve already hit the self destruct button and am unlikely to see anything but negativity even in the positive aspects of the day.
As he would go on and on about the Universe and the stars and history and absolutely everything, most of it being well over my head I took it in. I knew in my heart that Darrell was a good man, perhaps a bit crazy but good at heart and that’s all I needed to know. As with Tim or any other religious or spiritual person I’d ever met I listened and taking the information given to me made my own decisions. There were no demands put upon me outside of being willing to open my eyes to a different way to live. After having my realization with Garth Brooks there was little Darrell said to me that didn’t further cement and confirm some of the beliefs I was already holding or contemplating. After being in India for two months I had become certain of one thing. India is the land of spirituality. It seemed to be everywhere. With more Gods and Deities and Beliefs floating around than probably anywhere else on Earth it was hard to avoid the spiritual side of life and I’d not come here to find such realities but I also wasn’t against it. There was one woman that the family did respect a bit more than any other it seemed and this was: Amma(put full name). Amma is known in India and apparently around the world as: The Hugging Mother. A short plump Indian woman in her forties she originates in the delta waters of Kerala and has a large ashram there. Without realizing it I’d already seen this ashram on my trip with Veronica having noticed two large pink building protruding out of the palm trees but not knowing what they were I now found my life leading me back there. Somehow Darrell and the family kept track of where this woman was and knowing her to have a visa for Brunei denied to her she decided to come back to Kerala for a ten day stint before going on the road again. It seems she often travelled the world giving speeches and hugs. I didn’t really know why I was going there, or what I was going to do there, but it seemed like a good idea. I had been hearing about this woman for weeks as I’d been at Darrell’s now for nearly a month and knew what she looked like and that certainly her message was one of love and peace and therefore couldn’t see anything wrong with that. The ashram asked one to donate two hours of their day and twenty-five rupees a night for accommodation, I could handle that. I wasn’t going to be a loud to smoke for the time I was there but I could handle a few days off I figured.
Getting to the ashram this time via a bus and rickshaw I didn’t know what to expect and after some time found someone to ask questions of. Everyone was dressed in all white which was quite strange, loose white cotton trousers and top I felt like I was entering something of a cult. The two fifteen storied buildings were for housing and were on one side while the temple and compound was on the other side of a small road. The office assigned me a bed on the tenth floor and I was asked if there was anything specific I might want to do. Asking what there was I ended up volunteering to wash dishes for two hours everyday. All the meals were provided, a simple fare that if I wasn’t happy with I could walk into the small village not far off and get something, however it was encouraged that I didn’t wander off as this was a place of spiritual healing and growth and I should be concentrating on that, not on my nicotine and sugar habits. Both which were quite healthy, I couldn’t remember the last day I’d gone without a few bottles of Coke and at least a single cigarette.
The room was a simple affair of four beds, mine was the one with nothing on it and the toilet was clean enough. There was a large balcony on each floor that looked over the delta waters and the small temple and compound below me. Amma was somewhere down there as well, and knowing this to be a special occasion as usually if she were home there would be hundreds of people around it was now practically empty as people didn’t know or expect her to be at home. That night as the sun set some music started coming out of bullhorns set up around the compound and I could see people heading into the little temple.
Looking into this building that reminded me of a church without the pews we all sat down on the floor in front of a elevated platform and as men played music people sat and meditated. In due time Amma came out and somehow the energy level in the room raised considerable. This little smiling woman dressed in white sat down and started to chant. It was lovely. Many people seemed to know the words and silently sang along with her as I sat there thinking how much my legs hurt from sitting Indian style and taking this all in. It didn’t feel quite like Mass but then it didn’t differ all that much, certainly if nothing else I’d never felt this much power coming from any Mass I’d ever attended, there was something electric in the air that the churches must have lost at some point in their long history. I stayed for the entire hour session and then everyone filed out and went to bed. It had not been a long day but walking around the dusty compound, eating a rice and vegetable meal with my hands and getting more and more used to a squat toilet I was somehow ready for bed.
Darrell had explained to meet that part of the amazing aspect of this woman was that one could actually eat in the same area as her, that she gave out hugs was utterly unheard of and that where most people could be devotees their entire life never receiving any recognition from their guru Amma gave everyone a bit of love. That afternoon word had spread that she would be giving hugs to all that cared to receive one. I really wasn’t sure. I went into the temple and saw about fifty people sitting around facing her as she sat on a slightly elevated platform again dressed in all white. There was a small queue for people that cared to be hugged and I watched them go up, get a hug and a perhaps five seconds later stand up and go back to sit down. I didn’t see what one could get from a hug; nobody appeared any different and if most people were smiling this somehow didn’t seem odd to me so I joined the queue. It wasn’t a long wait before I found someone whipping the sweat off my face and then my approach and receiving of a hug. She said something indecipherable to me and I got up and walked away. My blood was on fire! I couldn’t understand it but something in this woman’s touch had set my nerves to a slight boil. I didn’t want to sit in the main foyer but also didn’t want to leave her presence just yet, I wanted to soak up this feeling and see what came about it. I went up to the second level where I could sit while overlooking the others and her giving hugs and closing my eyes I felt my body shaking slightly. It felt as though my entire body was shaking just a bit. My blood was going crazy, I wasn’t having spasms like some people I’d seen when touched by a guru, this was just a nice little energy boost, as though the heat had been turned up just a bit, it wasn’t shocking but it was powerful and for a long time I just sat there looking at her and feeling my body quiver, it was fantastic actually, I was well impressed suddenly this woman did have some gift to her indeed.
That night I didn’t go into the temple when the music began. In fact I never listened to the music from in that room again, it was odd but I couldn’t handle it. The power coming from her voice radiated in my soul and I was happy to sit on my tenth floor balcony on a mattress listening to her and meditating to the sounds. I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t explain it, I wanted her to be aware of my presence, perhaps my ego more than anything wanted this and if upon my arrival I didn’t know if I’d stay longer than the night as a week came to an end I decided to buy a few of her books, see about getting another hug and then making my way back to Varkala; somehow as magical as this place clearly was I also couldn’t be so close to it. On my last day I picked two books from the library and was happy to contribute the small amount of money to her, after all they had fed and housed me for next to nothing for the entire week and I went downstairs to get one last hug.
Again my body was shaking, it was the same thing all over again and as I went to climb the stairs up to my seat I’d used before I was suddenly in front of Eva. I hadn’t expected to see her here or Darrell and Schulli who followed her into the temple. I ended up talking with them and as my blood fell back down to earth I told them of going back home and was sad I hadn’t gotten to spend more time with this sensation but I knew the week had been good and nothing could replace that. I was heading back to Varkala and some of my new friends there and was happy about it.
When I got back to the house there was a new man there that I’d never seen before and had already hooked up with Eva it seemed. Also an Israeli and an old friend and boyfriend of Schullies, Aviv was in his late thirties, a tall somehow all and all large man that had a friendly smile and a long history in India, we got on straight away and before I knew it I was going to breakfast with him every morning as he had his coffee and croissant and I my Coke and croissant. He had come to Varkala to spend two weeks with Darrell and Schulli before heading to Nepal where he had a group of fifty people coming out to do a tour. Having been a traveller for the past fifteen years he eventually opened up a tour office in Tel Aviv and would come to Asia to do large corporate trips when the money was good enough and he could get away from the office. We exchanged stories, obviously with me doing most of the listening and three days before he left for his flight he invited me to come along on the trip. The trip was a five start ten day tour of Nepal, going rafting, doing a few city tours and staying in some of the best hotels in Kathmandu and Pokara.
Before meeting Aviv I had started to think about my next move but was thinking more along the lines of making my way up the East coast towards Goa or somewhere like that. I was still not really sure what I was doing in India but having been with Darrell and Schulli for all this time I’d been very happy and didn’t have to worry too much about money which pleased me as well. Now with Nepal and the along with Tasmanian, Kathmandu being one of the coolest names of a city or place I knew of in the world it was almost too good to resist. I wasn’t sure though, the luxury of it all way beyond tempting and I was told I could easily get a visa at the boarder so I couldn’t use that as an excuse clearly. It was just getting up there; I was at the tip of India and would have to travel the entire length up, not the most enjoyable of feats perhaps. As it was a friend of Darrell’s was going to Kollam, the city I would have to get my train from, and handing him a thousand rupees I told him if it was possible to get me on a second class air-conditioned bed for the train leaving in two days time that I would take it. I had already made sure Aviv was certain about inviting me, and as it was I would leave before him and arrive after but that didn’t matter, I would be able to stay at my first ever Radisson hotel!
When Sammer came back saying that I had a ticket I was partially glad and sad. Some of my best mates had started to leave Varkala after being there the entire or most of the six weeks I had so I knew it was time to move on, and now it was happening in the form of four days on a train. I said my goodbyes not knowing if I’d ever see any of these people again. Darrell had proved to be like a father to me and much of his beliefs in the Universe had already become part of me, now, not knowing exactly what the next chapter of my life held I was on the road again.
