I had to get out of the place. The Munster’s House was getting me down.
The arrival into Hyderabad had taken us all for an emotional loop. We were off balance, each one. This morning I refused to capitulate to the mixture of boredom and awe that had been my mornings over the last few weeks. I had had enough of sitting on that patio and gawking down at Hyderabad’s cityscape below. Enough of the hypnotic trance that came from listening to the car horns beeping around the city below. Enough of dodging the ubiquitous staff around the property. The kids were at school, Tara was going back to bed for a brief rest, and I had some time to burn. By this point I had normalized my work schedule to the Indian norms – in by 10 or 11. After years of getting to the office early and leaving in time for a dinner that was complete by 6:30 pm, I had my mornings free now. Mornings with India as my oyster. Mornings where I was free to do whatever I wanted. Mornings on the other side of the planet.
I had this morning as a stranger in a strange land.
How to occupy myself, I mused?
I needed a cup of coffee. Badly. Not the instant stuff that dominated the nation of India. We had had too much of that since our arrival. I needed something to scald the tongue and awaken the brain. Something to make me yawn later this afternoon. Something to give me a stiff neck at night. Some heavy caffeine was needed. I had two vices left – pipe tobacco and coffee. Today, I was going to indulge one of those vices in a big way. India had so far invigorated my senses in every way, often in very unwelcome ways. But the fine buzz of a strong cup o’ joe mostly eluded me.
This morning, I would change that.
Coffee.
I sat in the front room and slipped on my sandals. Good music was obligatory to an adventure, so I popped in the iPod. 2,354 different musical options sat in my hand. As I clicked through the playlists I considered just how many options 2,354 was. Too many for this moment. I decided to do what I called “iPod Zen archery”. In Zen archery you achieve a bulls eye by letting go with no intent of hitting the target. It was all about clearing the mind and letting the bow shoot you. I had developed a similar technique with my iPod. I stared at the small screen and let my thumb move without guidance from my mind. My thumb spun around the little circle and engaged Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.
Classical. Soothing. Familiar. Very nice.
This piece was a part of Western Civilization and my personal past. Choosing this song made me see that I thirsted for both coffee and familiarity this morning. So be it.
The piece slowed things down nicely. I walked through the house and unraveled. The strings of an orchestra had started to play gently. I suddenly remembered that they played this piece at JFK’s funeral. Not sure how or why I knew that, my brain was filled to the brim with useless facts. Some days they enriched me, some days they plagued me.
I walked out through the Butterfly Garden. From here there was a steep, two-tiered staircase down into the driveway and out to the front gate. This was monsoon time in Andhra, so the sky was grey. There was a gentle rain. I held onto the rail tightly. First step, slowly. Second step, slowly. Third step, slowly. Fourth step, comfortable. Fifth step, I decided the caution was not merited. Sixth step, normal. Seventh step, normal. Eighth step - I slipped and slammed into the steps. Big, hard, black steps made of marble. My body broke the fall of my body.
Pain shot throughout my body. My vision went blurry and I remembered that I had not had the wind knocked out of me since I was a boy on a bicycle, hitting a stone wall in Connecticut.
I was certain that I was injured.
The lowest rib on the right side of my back took most of the impact. My right elbow had also absorbed a good bit of the fall. I tried to move and involuntarily let out a muffled grunt. I winced. Good God, that hurt. I sat there for a second and tensed up my whole body. My teeth were clenched. I was lying across four different steps, leaning into small puddles while the sky gently offered more rain to me. I sat there for a bit and decided to take a deep breath. To release some of the tension in my body. I remembered that I had seen a yogi do some creative breathing on TV the other morning, but his stomach went flat when he inhaled. I wondered how he could have done that. About half way through the deep breath a pain shot up my spine. It was something I had not felt before.
“Great,” I muttered to myself.
I inhaled again. It hurt a bit less than the prior breath. The exhale that followed came out in small dispensations, each alleviating the pain a bit more. I inhaled again, this time fully, and let out a breath normally. I got up. I held onto the railing tightly and stepped slowly. I thought how a good walk would help work out whatever I had done. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I hoped that was the case. I really did not want to see the inside of an Indian hospital during our two years, but if it was bound to happen, I knew today would have been too early.
I got to the bottom of the steps. I started to walk across the driveway. When I got to the bottom I noticed that there were three people watching me curiously, two men and a woman. I was not sure who they were, there appeared to be about a dozen people engaged in some form of employment on our property. I assumed that they were employed by the Goels. I realized that they had watched my fall. "Thanks for the help,” I said quietly. The sarcasm was thick in my voice. Speaking those words caused whatever happened to my back to ache acutely. OK, I thought, that was probably unfair. I decided to smile and wave now. The woman in their midst diverted her eyes and the two men put their hands over their hearts and smiled.
Whatever that meant.
One of them ran over to the gate and opened it for me. I wondered why he felt it was important to open the gate for me yet not to rush to my aid when I had cracked my considerable frame on several slabs of elevated, wet marble.
Dulcet tones, adagio....I walked up our street. The sky maintained it color of deep grey. Two chickens shot across the road in front of me. They were remarkably thin. Maybe that was what chickens were supposed to look like, I considered. Maybe I had only seen the monster chickens created in US factory farms. But these guys were really, really thin. Barely a mouthful on either of them, I thought.
A wild dog watched me with a high degree of disinterest as I walked by. It was interesting to me that even on a shee-shee street like ours you had feral animals. I watched the dog in my periphery, not trusting it. Our street that was lined with beautiful homes and proud branches of aged trees, yet, incongruously, it was also strewn with piles of garbage.
The rain, the fall, the feral animals had all conspired to turn a beautiful piece of music into a depressing set of tones. JFK’s funeral dirge was not exactly what I needed right now. Away with Zen, I needed something else and was going to choose. I stood in the middle of the street. My back hurt and I was pretty wet by now. I wiped the face of the iPod on my jeans and clicked through some playlists.
I knew just the song.
Freebird.
Uniquely American, a song that appealed to virtually every American male, no matter what they might say about the song.
Freebird.
Yeah, Freebird'll do the trick.
I had downloaded the Original Version of Freebird. I was never sure of the difference from other versions. It sounded like it was a bit more raw, perhaps. Guitar and piano. Nice. Was it unplugged? Not sure. It was good, though.
If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?
I must be traveling on now,
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.......
If I stay here with you, girl.
Things just couldn't be the same.
‘cause I'm as free as a bird now.....I walked along. I got to the end of our street and took a left. Road Number 23. There was group of about five people sitting there. They inhabited the camp at the end of our street that, again incongruously with the neighborhood, was comprised of a huddle of huts woven from palm fronds. The watched me with intense curiosity. I smiled and waved. They all just stared in return. Kind of odd. No hand over the chest, no diverted eyes. No smiles. Just stares.
I continued down the street, limping a bit. More people were ahead. A woman in a bright yellow sari with a jug of water on the top of her head walked past me. Her gaze never broke from me.
I hit Road 22. More people. More stares. A group of men. They stopped their conversation in Telugu and stared at me. Two more dogs. Staring.
Watch out, don’t step in that. Nor that.
Wow.
As I continued down the street I noticed a group of eight children standing on the corner waiting for their bus. The boys had navy blue shorts and ties on. Their shirts were white and impeccably pressed. The girls had white blouses and navy blue skirts. Again, the shirts were pressed to a degree just shy of perfection. When they saw me they stopped their chatter and simultaneously looked my way. Everyone had been staring at me during this walk, and so far there had been two main categories of starers. There were those staring with interest, and then there were those staring with interest while feigning disinterest. These children had not refined the Indian practice of staring with interest while feigning disinterest. They smiled and pointed at me. They began to whisper. A boy from the group stepped out of the pack and walked a few steps forward. He yelled, “Hi!” The girls put their hands to their mouths and looked at each other. The other boys laughed, but one looked scared.
The boy who had yelled “hi” said it again.
“Hi!”
I was still a few steps short of the group, but I continued to walk on. I stopped in front of them. At this point they all looked uncertain, even the ring leader boy. I stood there in front of them.
“Hi!” I said
They erupted.
Every kid started to yell, “Hi!” One of the girls, previously reserved, starting to laugh uncontrollably. “Hi!” Jumping around. This was first for me, and I was pretty sure this was a first for them, as well. I started laughing, at first lightly, then it picked up. I said, “How are you?”. They went crazy, yelling over and over again “How are you, I am fine!”
I laughed harder. I thought how amazing life could be. I started to laugh in a different way, the kind of laugh that has such joy that tears well. I felt a tightness in my throat. How amazing could life be? Perhaps more amazing than this very moment, I thought. But not often.
“Hi, how are you? I am fine.”
I kept walking. I laughed harder. By this point in Freebird Lynyrd Skynyrd was cranking out the jam which had ignited redneck crowds for almost two generations but I could still hear the screams behind me, “Hi! How are you? I am fine!”
An excellent moment, as Tara called such things. An excellent moment.
I kept walking. At that corner I turned right onto Road Number 10. Multitudes of people were milling and shuffling and navigating and negotiating and beeping and swerving and doing an indescribable amount of other things. It was organized chaos at its best. I had a huge smile on my face, but I remembered to be alert in the traffic.
Indian traffic is hard to describe to the initiated. It takes a while, but you eventually see an order in the chaos. I had not quite figured out the exact details, but I was convinced that there was some mechanism operating on these roads that ensured everyone was not consumed in a series of fiery wrecks. I had a suspicion that it had something to do with the dogs knowing that they were lower than the pedestrians, the pedestrians knowing that they were lower than the bicycles, the bicyclists knowing that they were lower than the motorcycles, the motorcycles knowing that they lower than the cars, the cars knowing that they were lower than the trucks, and the trucks knowing that they were lower than the buses. And they all had to remember that they were lower than the cows. Indian traffic seemed to be a motorized microcosm of the caste system. Brahma’s offspring empowered with pistons and petrol. Somehow, it worked.
Despite the attention to hierarchy in Indian traffic, there was one rogue element. The rickshaw drivers. This demographic pulled from all communities, the common feature of these men was a complete lack of regard for life and limb, both their own and those around them. They spun through the very Indian mix of humanity and vehicles with complete disregard for any rules. They were the exceptions to every rule on the Indian roads. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, I thought. To me, they were terrorists. Depends on how you look at it. Maybe.
I walked along, everyone continuing to stare at me.
Out of the crowd a man came up. His glasses were impossibly thick. The thing about coke bottles….. like that thick. He had a dirty rag wrapped around his head. Most of his teeth were missing. He walked up to me and held out his hand. His shirt was a loose white t-shirt and he was wearing one of those plaid kilt-looking things.
Oh, wow. He only has one leg.
His right leg was gone from the knee down. The prosthetic limb that he used was a hand-hewn piece of tree. I would call it a piece of wood, but it had gone through no refinement. It looked to have been cut from a tree with a machete. It was tied onto his leg with crude string. I was surprised by how able he was on this limb. He sauntered right up to me with his hand out. I had never seen anything like it. We had had innumerable experiences with people begging from us, but they generally were relatively able-bodied and what I called their “pity face” was largely an act. But this man was actually smiling. He was probably in the most dire need of anyone seeking my rupees, yet he did not feign a scowl. He smiled. His eyes were inconceivably large behind these glasses. I was scared and fascinated all at once.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a note. I didn’t take note of how big the note was, I just handed it to him. I tried to drop it into his hand, fearing to touch his skin. The bill missed his hand. It fell to the ground. We both stared at the bill. Vehicles were shooting all around us. Beep. Beep. We both looked up, into each other’s eyes. I felt many things at this point, but the most significant impulse was to just turn and run. I felt ashamed by the idea of just turning and running. This is the kind of guy Jesus walked with, the kind He wants me to walk with.
But running would be ok, too. I could ask for forgiveness later.
Instead, I bent over and picked up the bill. I noticed that it was a 500 rupee note. Not a huge amount to me, but it was probably more money than this guy saw in a week. Maybe even a month.
I handed him the bill, my hand gently grazing his. He looked at the bill, then back up at me. His eyes got wider. I couldn’t believe they could get any bigger behind those glasses, but they did. He held the bill up to his forehead, then his heart.
Again, whatever that meant.
I made my escape. I turned and walked toward My Caffe Latte. This was the right place to get a coffee. They had two main choices, Café Bollywood and Café Hollywood. I would have one of each. And then some.
The place was just at the end of Road Number 10. In the near distance I could see that where 10 hit Road Number 36. It was an absolute melee. But right there, across Road Number 36, was the place. It had a huge alien on the top, from the movie Aliens. Jaws retracted and all. I headed toward it. They had a James Bond room on the ground floor. On the walls of the room there were Bond movie posters and pictures from every era. The names of every Bond beauty was embossed on the wall. Great place. An odd retreat, but it had become my favored place to sit back and withdraw from the frey.
I continued to walk down the street.
Watch out, don’t step in that. Nor that.
Whoa, that looks like a human brain. Naw, it’s too white.
Keep walking. More people were staring at me. I passed a group of eight women standing in a hole that they were digging. They were clearly from the rural areas. Huge nose rings, very thin, a look in their eyes that captivates. They all stared, but they were different. They had small smiles on their face, like I was some cosmic joke. I suppose I did look odd to them, perhaps the first white man they had seen off of a screen, assuming they came from a place with electricity. One said something to the others in Telugu, the local language. It sounds like a pebble being shaken around in a tin can. Whatever she said, they all laughed gently and returned to their work.
I continued on.
When I go to the intersection, I was astounded by the traffic. This traffic was an amazing set of events. It seemed doomed to descend into fire and death at any minute. Yet, somehow, it was working. It presented me with the last hurdle. Getting across the street. There was a guy in a uniform at the intersection with me. I walked over to him. The patch on the shoulder of the pressed white shirt said, “Andhra Pradesh Traffic Police”. Perfect, here was my man. I was standing behind him, so he had not yet noticed me. He simply stood there gently waving his hand in the air. I considered what that might mean, then I realized that he was waving the traffic along. Like it was going to make a difference. My jaw dropped for a second, then I started to laugh again. As if a single vehicle was paying any attention to him. Hilarious. I decided to see if I could employ his services. I turned around his shoulder and said one of the few phrases in Hindi I knew, “Maf Karna.” Excuse me. Not that I could follow it up with a sensible sentence in Hindi, much less Telugu. He looked at my and his brow furrowed a little. I was asking him to multi-task, managing the traffic and talking. And I probably looked to him like a huge, bleached out, shaven Sasquatch would have looked like to me. He bobbed his head from side to side, the universal Indian sign of acknowledgment. Or so I thought. I remained more than a little unclear as to the meaning of head movements over here.
“Can you help me cross, please?”
He looked at me. He smiled a bit and then bobbed his head in a slightly different way. I got it. No English. I decided to use some sign language.
Hands to my chest, hands move across the street we were facing, then point to the alien on the top of My Caffe Latte. Repeat.
He got it.
He stepped out into the traffic. I almost yelled, “Watch out!” but it happened too quickly. Everyone in the first wave of traffic disregarded him. Everyone in the second wave stopped. It was like seeing Moses part the Red Sea. Miraculous. Every vehicle slowed down at once. The three designated lanes of Road Number 36 had a full breadth of six ad hoc lanes of traffic. They all stopped. Rickshaws, motorcycles, cars, SUVs. This guy had nothing but a whistle and a huge dose of courage. He stood there in the gap and waved me across. His eyes seemed to say, “Hurry, Pharaoh is following, I am not sure how long God will hold this.” I walked across to the median. One more lane to cross.
But he walked right into this traffic, as well. Same events. First wave ignored him and almost hit him. Second waves ground to a universal halt. I walked across. I was in the parking lot for My Caffe Latte. The Promised Land. The land of milk and coffee.
I walked up. A young man who was clearly from north-eastern India opened the door up for me. He looked Chinese, but he was brown. I was not sure when the last time I opened a door on my own was.
I walked into the front hallway of the place. Johnny Depp’s bust was there, Pirates of the Caribbean. A few skulls strewn around the dark lobby. Well done. This place was pretty cool.
“Good morning, sir!” The abundant staff was milling around the front hall. I took the sharp right turn into the James Bond Room. Empty. Big screen playing some news. Nice. I had arrived intact.
A young man in the black uniform rushed a menu over to me. I took it and put it on the table. I knew what I wanted. “Café Bollywood, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
I sat back. The news said there was rioting in Uttar Pradesh, something about young Islamic pilgrims getting hit by a truck. It had set off a whole city. There was picture of a burning truck. I was glad I wasn’t there.
I scanned the room. The World is not Enough in Japanese. A vintage Man with the Golden Gun poster. Nice. Onya Onasova’s name on the wall. Jinx. What movie was she in?
He rushed the coffee over. I was wet, a little cold, and my back still ached. I thanked him. The foam on the top of the Café Bollywood had a little fern shape in it. Again, very nice. I took a packet of sugar, something I don’t usually do with coffee, and poured it into the Café Bollywood. Stir. Sip.
Yup, that did the trick. Really hot. It went through my body. I was like those people in the coffee commercials of my youth – sipping coffee with an unseemly intimacy to their mug. Ah, yes. This was good.
A mere thirty days before I had stepped out of my car on the same way into work and ordered a cup of coffee at the same Starbucks from the same androgynous teenager. This was a far more adventurous cup of coffee. I had earned this one to a degree that would have been almost impossible back in the US. I felt a certain sense of triumph of even being there and drinking it.
Yeah, I could get used to India.
