Even before the train stopped, we were swarmed by hotel touts and I signed up for one, along with an Italian - let's call him Paolo. We were to find out much, much later that what we saved on the cheap hotel fare we more than lost in the inflated "camel safari" fare, but that is another story to be archived under "stupidity".
Anyway, Paolo was a voluble, highly emotional person who I am sure had animated conversations with his hands behind the closed doors of his room. We did end up signing for that safari. It gave many memorable...er, memories.
The camel driver was a tall, dark and wiry Muslim in some kind of a feudal subjugation to the hotel owner / operator, also a Muslim, embodied in the form of a handsome young 20-something who boasted of how many women he'd done, including the wife of a guest whom he'd banged on the roof as her husband slept in their room below. Charming. The driver had a 13-year old kid, who looked about 9 - small, frail, but cheerful and conversationally competent in about a dozen European languages. They made INR 1,500 a month working for this ratty hotel; the kid was not in school and I doubt my entreaties to the father to send him to one had any effect; and they literally lived in a different place and time - the driver's question to me was not where I came from or whatever, but whether I was Muslim or Rajput - not even "Muslim or Hindu". That was how narrow his world view was, warm and friendly as he was, and why I referred to his and the hotel owners' religion - those identities and allegiances clearly still mattered a lot in these parts and ages.
But things were improving. The kid watched our cell phones the whole journey and eventually asked us for one - "I don't have to wait all day at the hotel to know if we get customers, I can call in or be called", he said - and Paolo, tears brimming, took out his SIM card and gave his Nokia to him at the end of the trip. Nevertheless, when the hotel owner got wind of this as we were all chatting in the room that passed for reception, the kid rather cowered as he hung about the doorway, as was his place no doubt. I was not comfortable how he would survive this turn of events, a simple attempt to becoming more empowered, no doubt a huge transgression in the eyes of a typical feudal bastard. I only then got a sense for what people bemoan as the "feudalism" of Pakistan, just a 100 kilometers or so to the west. The hotel guy even asked for the phone, and turning it over and examining the battered, crappy Nokia closely - to him it might as well have been a hammer and sickle rolled into one.
Anyway, we did get on the camel and trudged for random periods of time for 2-3 days, settling down for meals - invariably, roti and some veggies, as we had wisely chosen not to request any meat - random naps, and slept on stacks of twigs or branches in the desert. I don't recall how or where we secured shade during the days. The driver and son constantly tried to entice us into getting a chicken for the next meal and at one point did successfully entice us to get beer, brought lukewarm in a gunny sack with ice and straw. Now you may ask how did they manage that - the fact is, I suspect we were hardly ever very far from the roads and it was unlikely that I'd ever have been lost and rescued like a story from the "Drama in real life" sections from Reader's Digest (Motto: "They still read us in India"). In fact I suspect we were always within earshot, figuratively speaking, of villages ready to supply overpriced meat and beer to idiot tourists. Cleaning up after meals consisted of rubbing everything down with sand. But his hand-flattened dry rotis were some of the best I'd ever had, as were the simple veggies he prepared.
The kid delighted me with what I thought was a folk song passed down over the centuries, only to realize after returning to the real world that it was a movie song: "Kajra re".
On one of these days we experienced a first-class sandstorm - the sort of event that one read about as a child in a magazine like "Tinkle". The skies darkened (actually I don't recall, but it is fun to make up memories) and the dust picked up. As expected, we dismounted and found some bushes, and the camels were made to sit, with the humans sheltering behind a double protective layer: camel, then bush. It wasn't too bad actually, but visibility did drop to a foot at best. It lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we could see the sky, each other, the camel etc.
The kid delighted me with what I thought was a folk song passed down over the centuries, only to realize after returning to the real world that it was a movie song: "Kajra re".
On one of these days we experienced a first-class sandstorm - the sort of event that one read about as a child in a magazine like "Tinkle". The skies darkened (actually I don't recall, but it is fun to make up memories) and the dust picked up. As expected, we dismounted and found some bushes, and the camels were made to sit, with the humans sheltering behind a double protective layer: camel, then bush. It wasn't too bad actually, but visibility did drop to a foot at best. It lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we could see the sky, each other, the camel etc.
One fine afternoon, we chanced upon a mini-oasis of sort - a pond, really - with some tropical trees nearby - and I discovered the skull of some antler-bearing animal. I used my swiss knife to saw off the single, 10-inch long, curved horn, helped by the kid. I still have it on my mantle. Halfway through this process a very gruff, mustachioed, turbaned figure turned up and tried to grab the Swiss knife. I think only the fact that it was with the kid, who stubbornly refused to hand it in, saved it from appropriation. The people here were gruff, not in the sharp-elbowed Punjabi ways of Delhi, but a different, hardier, earthier, simpler way of a different time and age from a terrain wracked by war since time immemorial - the races that have crisscrossed this part of India may include the Scythians, the Sveta Hunas (Abdalis / Hephthalites), Kushanas, and down to the Arabs, Persians, Turco-Mongols all the way to the Ghaznavids, Ghourids and finally the cretins we celebrate as the great Mughals.
It was either in that spot or at another one that we came across what looked like a large patch of mud. The driver let the camels in, I think, and cheerily told us we should have a dip too - carefully not taking one himself. The excitable Paolo jumped in and immediately sank in waist-level mud. He seemed not in the least put off, and like a clever buffalo that knows something you don't on a scorching day, wallowed about for a long while and emerged in his skivvies covered in brown mud. He looked like something from a bad science fiction movie - by which I mean Lord of the Rings, with those evil creatures created from the slime of the earth by the head of the evil people, whatever he is called. Sauron or something. If they let me, I would slay the annoying Hobbits in one fell swoop, is what I say.
Sidekick: Mr Frodo (glug)! I can't leave your side, I don't care if I drown (glug, glug)!!
Frodo: (silent, with his retarded, stoned, glassy-eyed look with those hideously large and scary eyeballs surrounded by an even larger expanse of white, which for some reason chicks dig)
Me: Bang! Bang! Die motherfuckers!!
Gaandu the Wizard: Thank god you did it: that bastard Peter Jackson wouldn't let me. Fucking annoying midget cretins, constantly klutzing around and getting us into trouble.
But I digress. Paolo the Italian, professional bouncer at the trendiest London clubs, enjoyed his wallow. I am not sure how I stood being around him for the rest of that day, or journey. Possibly by staying upwind. But he had a good heart, god bless him.
He was charitable to random strangers, apart from the cellphone donating act that I already mentioned. Every little street urchin would make him want to stop, talk, give money. Like most hippie-types, he worse grungy linen, slapped a tikka on his forehead every chance he could and spoke with awe of India and her spirituality - it sounds cliche, I know, but he was a genuine soul. Walking the fort of Jaisalmer together, we ended up at some lady's home based on her advertising palmistry services. She began reading him and his eyes almost popped out.
Palmist: You wanted to adopt a child
Paolo: Oh my god-a, yes!!!! How did-a you know? (turns to me) She is right-a!!! How did-a she know?!!
Palmist (to me): You don't want to get read? You're too afraid to find out the future aren't you?
Me: (silent)
Palmist: Here, see this book of seemingly random alphabets? This is my code to write down my take for the day, so that no one else can find out.
No doubt the Indian tax service was quivering.
I walked many a time past the Rajasthan government-run bhang stall.
For the record, I never imbibed. But I think Mr Frodo did.
Paolo was to later find me on Facebook, but sadly I do not patronize that site any longer.
Paolo was to later find me on Facebook, but sadly I do not patronize that site any longer.
1 comment:
entertaining read :-)
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