The Words of the Mouth

by Ronald Smith

  ******

  We had been invited to a fancy-dress New Year's party. I put on glittering silver eye make-up, turquoise electric-blue trousers, and decorated my cowboy hat with a garish bandanna. As I got into the car I remembered that Bob had said to pick him up in the pub in Newburgh - but he had not said which pub.

  God, I thought, I've just got myself outrageously dolled up and now I'll have to go into all those pubs on Hogmanay and they'll be full of people.

  The first pub didn't have all that many people in it when I put my head through the door, but everyone stopped talking and turned a shocked stare at me. No sign of Bob. I quickly backed out and drove up the road a bit beyond the next pub, parked the car, and threw the hat in the back thinking at least I could look a little less ridiculous. But then the cowardice of what I was doing struck me, and I knew I would not be able to look myself in the face if I didn't wear the hat, so I pulled it back on and walked back.

  Just then a group of about twenty yobbos in leather jackets, noisy with drink, was crowding along the pavement towards me. I could see contempt and hostility taking shape on their faces; it was a dangerous moment.

  I reacted by rushing boldly up to one lad I recognized who had been working at the Mill and threw him on the ground, enthusiastically pretending to beat him up. "Happy New Year, Davie !"

  His mates were aghast, unable to move. I realized at that point everyone had been calling me 'Mad Will' so I turned it around.

  "Yer all bloody mad, the whole lot of ya, yer all a bunch of crazies," I cried mockingly as I stood up and strode past them, tickled at the idea that the most crazy looking person was telling all these normal types that they were the crazy ones.

  There was a sliding door leading into the bar which I pulled back dramatically.

  As the inevitable hush fell and all faces turned towards me with surprise, I held up both hands as if they wielded invisible guns and growled menacingly into the embarrassed smoky silence: "Stick 'em up and don't move."

  A man shifted and I took aim and shot him.

  "Pow! Pow!"

  Next I shot the barman.

  Then someone started shooting back. We had a shoot-out. The whole bar full of men firing invisible guns blazed away at me. I backed out of the door, still shooting and blowing smoke from the barrels.

  But we never did find Bob that night.

  During the first two months of the New Year a lot of snow fell, smothering yard and trenches with velvety, white fluff that concealed the rubble, muffled the rooftops, and swathed the hillside with innocence; it also brought the work on the Mill almost to a standstill.

  The work was costing about five hundred pounds a week, and becoming increasingly expensive. I had had just about enough, I needed a break. Somewhere warm and exotic. And it would be a good idea to get Mairi and our little girl away from Jamie, I felt.

  "Look, Mairi, I think we should go to India for a while," I knew she had always fancied going there.

  "Oh, Will, what a lovely idea. But we can't possibly afford to leave,"

  "If we close the place down, we'll actually save money and be economising by going to India, It's cheap over there, and Bob can paint the end cottage so it'll be ready when we return, I can rely on him to keep an eye on things while we're away,"

  "Yes," she agreed, enchanted by the prospect of escaping from her drudgery, "let's leave at once," I felt a quickening of the conspiratorial intimacy we had shared, which had all but vanished in the last months.

  I phoned London and got a price on the tickets, I asked the bank manager to give us a giro credit, and telexed the money to the airline.

  On the next day, the eve of our departure, I got stuck in a blizzard with Bob, high up in the Ochil Hills above Dunning. Struggling through the drifting snow, my mind was racing ahead: Mairi was waiting with our gear; we had to catch the train, pick up the tickets, and if I did not make the first connection we would never get to India. It was only the compelling vision of that faraway, fabled land which kept me shovelling snow and heaving the car over the blocked roads.

  We set off that evening on the sleeper, collected the tickets the following morning, stayed the night in London, and rose at four a.m.; finally, by seven o'clock, we were on the plane for India, at Heathrow.

  With us went two sacks of disposable nappies, which had been the subject of much disagreement. I had been adamant; I wasn't going to take bloody disposable nappies to India; but Mairi insisted, and she further insisted that we take the pushchair, which in the event, turned out to be a great boon.

  At twelve midnight, we found ourselves in Bombay, having only made up our minds to leave three days previously, and not until three a.m. did we manage to locate a hotel.

  My intention was to reach Goa, where my sister Jess was staying, because her birthday was imminent. Besides, 1 didn't want to get stuck in Bombay.

  I asked the desk clerk at the hotel, "When's the next boat to Goa?"- that being the best mode of travel - and he replied in his up-and-down accent:

  "It sails at ten o'clock sharp, sir, sharp," Then he added, "You must leave the hotel by twenty past nine at the latest."

  So with extreme firmness, playing the colonial Briton, I said "Right. I want to be woken up at quarter to eight, I want the breakfast, and I want the bill ready."

  "Oh, yes, sir, very good. We are very organised. I make sure."

  In the morning, nobody came to waken us, but I rose early and demanded the bill first thing.

  At twenty to ten I still hadn't been given it and I was becoming really angry. When we finally emerged from the hotel, I grabbed a taxi off the street and barked,

  "Right! Quick as you can to the Goa boat.”

  At every set of traffic lights the driver turned off his engine; he coasted down every hill. I sat right behind the driver, my fist upraised, at the ready, urging him, "Faster!" and as I said Faster,he seemed to go slower. Then I did something I've never done before or since. I hit him: WHACK!

  It wasn't a hard blow, just heavy enough to give him the idea of urgency, and I snarled, "Fuckin move, ya bastard."

  He drove like a maniac, then.

  We tore through the densely packed streets of Bombay and arrived at a huge structure, like an aircraft hangar, full of thousands of people. I could hear a hooter in the distance, as the clock chimed ten. Beyond all the people I could see a boat at the far end.

  The taxi driver was shouting at me. Mentally gathering resolve, I threw some money at him, and with the little girl in the pushchair, and Mairi carrying the bags, I shouted "Charge!", and the crowd parted in amazed silence before us.

  In the distance the gang plank was ready to lift. We rushed straight through the ticket collectors and as the gang plank began to rise, we galloped over it, into the boat. We collapsed on seats, next to a Persian guy.

  "Hello, My name is Addy," he introduced himself, and we laughed about our close shave.

  There we were, sitting in this damned boat, sailing off and I hadn’t even paid for a ticket yet; it seemed a white man in India could do anything if he was really determined.

  I looked around and saw a couple of hippies on the deck near us, looking very snootily in our direction, noting with disdain the baby, the pushchair, and the disposable nappies.

  Then suddenly, I heard a shout of sheer delight:

  "Hullo, JIMMY! Fuckin magic, ya nutter!”

  As I looked behind in astonishment, a little round black guy was approaching with a huge grin over his face, repeating all the while, “Fuckin Magic.” I looked at him. taking in the Celtic badges, the 'Scotland Forever’ stickers, and the scots Tammie on his head – and he was an Indian!

  He’d worked on the oilrigs, he told us, hence his feeling of kinship, and to celebrate his reunion with a couple of Scots he went away and bought us drinks, and returned to sit with us.

  By now I was in a kind of seventh heaven, spaced out through not having slept for several days. The passengers were everywhere, sitting down very casua
lly just where the notion took them. Then, at a certain moment, everyone just lay down and it fell completely silent.

  But we walked the decks all that night with the child who was almost berserk with the temperature. By morning we were in a daze of pure exhaustion.

  The boat came into Goa as the sun was rising.

  We had no idea where Jess was staying. Mercifully, Addy took over. A Zarathustrian, he spoke seven languages, including the local Goa dialect. He cut through our muddle, suggesting we head for the biggest town, along the coast.

  As we came off the bus in the town, Mairi brightly suggested checking at the Post Office to see whether our letters had reached Jess, and to ask where she lived.

  I was standing in a queue in the little Indian Post Office when, behind me, a voice exclaimed in disbelief: “Will! Will Sangster!” I turned around to see who it was, and saw Barrie, an aquaintance from Edinburgh.

  "Oh yeah," he said, matter-of-factly, once I had explained our situation, "I know where Jess stays," And then, as the surprise resurged in him, he grasped my arm and pulled me towards a café.

  ". Come away in. Let’s go and have a have a joint, man. I've got the best dope in the world, man, the best!"

  In the cafe where he led me, he proceeded to fill his chillum with about a quarter of an ounce of dope. Everything, which had been ticking over with reasonable smoothness until then, now went swiftly out of my grasp. Fighting an intense feeling of nausea, I went and sat outside the café. I dimly knew that we were waiting for some other friends of Barrie's to share a taxi as far as Jess's, but I didn't realise that it was midday now and the all-powerful tropical sun was glaring down on the back of my neck.

  As I sat there trying helplessly to control the spinning in my head, I kept repeating to myself ‘I’ve just had a quarter of an ounce of the best dope in the world; two days ago I was pushing the car out of a blizzard. Crazy.’ By the time we reached the house where Jess lived, I was feeling decidedly ill.

  It was her birthday and she'd received our card that very day announcing 'We'll be arriving sometime'; but she was extremely ill with hepatitis and my immediate reaction on seeing her was that she was dying; she'd lost a tooth, her face was thin, and there she was, stuck in the middle of a foetid jungle.

  Her bloke, a big, heavy, dour bastard when he was in a good mood, was just coming off some drug and was surly in the extreme. With Jess in one hell of a state, and Kirsty, their kid , to look after, the last thing he wanted to see was his brother-in-law and family.

  “Fucking Hell, what’s all this?” he snarled menacingly, shifting on his rush bedding as we crowded into their little one-roomed Indian hut – Mairi, two bulky sacks of disposable nappies, the screaming baby – while Jess lay on the floor, barely able to smile weakly up at us.

  In that climate, if you drop just one crumb of food, a column of ants will emerge from away over on the other side of the room and descend upon it; leave any food lying around and whole armies of them begin marching and counter-marching. If you are cooking and eating in a mud hut, it is an impossible place to keep clean and tidy and ant-free.

  We had to sleep on rush mats which have tiny little slits that ants cannot cross. In sleeping, no part of one’s body must reach over the edge. The only drawback is that the mats were designed for the Indians, who are very short and small, only about five and a half feet at most. I hunched into a little ball and went to sleep. Before long, my hand strayed over the edge and the first ant bit.

  Staying with Jess and her man, Ricky, was not the formula for a good holiday.

  Goa is a place which attracts all the western people who 'do' dope. It's a place where there are no laws. In the words of the Goanese guy Joe, from the oilrigs, "We Goanese are a really happy people. We don't mind what anyone else does so long as they aren't affecting the native equilibrium. You could stand in the middle of the market square and cut your throat, and it's your privilege to do that; nobody would stop you. Do absolutely anything you choose to yourself in Goa. But if you mess Goanese people about it's a different story."

  For years and years, the Portuguese colonized the region and built up their little empire by creating lots of bastards and thus a half-caste population. Goa was a little Christian enclave, an area where most of the inhabitants were catholics, but with a history of promiscuity. The Portuguese went there for a good time, and the Indians go there for the same reason now, because of the absence of liquor laws – liquor is dirt cheap – and to buy cameras and commercial goods on the cheap.

  Goa has this dark, abandoned aspect to it, and the hippies are simply the continuation of a long tradition, one in which the very soil is steeped. When freaks go there, they can choose their drugs, smoke openly, and behave freely; no one and no law is going to stop them. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting; any fantasy that people want to indulge is permitted, so long as the native pattern of life is not disturbed. You can party night after night on anything you please. It’s like a Hell on Earth, an Eastern Las Vegas; but it’s beautiful as well. We met people who were virtually dying, saw dead bodies washed up on the beach, and then happy people walking hand in hand, and then disappearing with laughter into the bushes; all amongst palm trees, the sand, and the sea.

  We had to get out of Ricky’s house in the jungle; our little girl, Sheena, was becoming sick with the heat, and we were desperate for some alternative accommodation. Most of the houses with rooms to rent were squalid, and were full up, anyway. However, Mairi and I noticed a really beautiful house set within its own little garden, with papayas, coconuts, guavas and other tropical fruit. When we went to enquire about rooms, a very quiet, lady-like nun came to the door. She gave us a thorough inspection lasting several minutes before finally agreeing “Well, you might be able to stay a night or two.”

  So we moved into this old Portuguese house, one of the most charming I’d ever seen. A balcony ran around the huge central room, with smaller rooms leading off it, and great spacious steps; it was all airiness and light, and with the jungle outside only ten feet away.

  Life proceeded according to a very efficient system there. In comparison to our former lodgings it was like being in Heaven. A shower could be had out of a big earthenware tub and there was 1ighting from lanterns, if not electricity. The old custom of using cowdung on the floor was maintained; they got a man to beat it all down until it was shiny and the surface marked from the beating. Cowdung has a property which kills ants and if this is done every two months, ants won’t survive. The two women who ran the house were so clean that not a speck of dirt was left to attract ants in the first place.

  There was a morning when I was startled awake; I heard a soft ‘Thud’ and opened my eyes. Mairi was sleeping six feet away from me, and on the floor between the mats were two large scorpions which had fallen from the great wooden roof beams above us.

  In a reaction of pure fear, I grabbed a book and hurled it down upon them. Then I was seized by an attack of the horrors: ‘Christ! What do I do with them?’ I picked up the black mass and tore outside with it, almost gibbering, but they were dead. By the time I’d fetched Alice, one of our two hostesses, an army of ants had already dismembered the scorpions and they were dragging legs away to their nest.

  In Goa we met some terrible people; amongst them were a lot of Scots folk I’d run about with in my teens in Edinburgh, now all dealing dope and living in beautiful tents up on the cliffs. They sold Afghani and various other sorts of dope. There was a definite politic about that which everyone ascribed to. Someone fell out with me because I had naively mentioned that so-and-so’s dope wasn’t bad, imagining I was implying that it was better than his own, and so he refused to speak to me after that, as he had the best dope in the world, man.We were in restaurants in Goa where people were smoking chillums , and when they left, one could pick up a quarter of an ounce off the table from what they had scattered in their crumbs. They had parties and made hash cakes, putting half a pound in the cakes. Without exaggeration, th
ey completely blitzed themselves on smack and other substances day after day.

  There were Britons who had sold their passports, now trying to work out a way of staying alive; Italians who had been wandering about in a bubble of dope until it was finished, leaving them crazed and desperate; a guy who had picked up headlice and had had a hole bored in his skull, people who had lived in India for years, never combing their hair and going around like Indian Sadhus with great tangled balls in their hair, infested with insects. I saw three Scots arguing fiercely about the price and relative status of a ridiculous piece of dope.

  It was pathetic.

  I wanted to get out of it as soon as I could. I could feel my body going soft; I started doing press-ups and went jogging, had my hair cut short, and even wanted to buy a suit because they were all parading about in loin cloths.

  I hated the whole scene; I felt myself becoming a reactionary; I refused all chillums, I smoked less and less dope, I fell out with the Scottish crowd . They were all sneering “He cannae tak his chillum” just the way they did back in Scotland “He cannae tak his pints”, trying to get me as stoned as possible. But I refused.

  The outstanding feature of Goa is the pig system. In the old house where we were staying, they had the traditional Goanese sanitary arrangements: there’s a nice little outhouse that resembles a chapel. It has a fence around it, and there’s a pig in this enclosure; it’s a special pig – a shit-eating pig.

  You go up the steps into the little whitewashed chapel. Inside, in the space to bend down, are two places for your feet, and a hole that stretches down to the outside. And if you’re the first person to use the ‘chapel’ that day, remember the pig hasn’t eaten since last night and is particularly, voraciously, hungry.

  As you bend down, the pig shoves its head right up the hole, which is so designed that the animal can get his snout to within three inches of your backside, so that no fly can land on your shit before the pig eats it.

  That first day, I had diarrhea. I squatted there with the pig squealing wildly below me, which was off-putting. But I needed to relieve myself. The correct mental attitude was, it seemed, for me to hate the pig.

  “Right, you bastard! HNNNN!” I exploded – and the pig slurped it up like a living vacuum cleaner.

  That is a very good start for the morning, as all your hatred comes out and leaves you ; but you must really hate that pig in order to achieve release.

  Since these ‘chapels’ are scarce, the local sewage system has broken down somewhat because of all the Europeans in residence, and a number of pigs were running about wild, gobbling the dung of the incomers who just go into the bushes to relieve themselves.. For this reason, a stick should always be carried as protection against the pigs which try to attack and eat one’s turds even as they emerge.

  Even that system would be quite effective, only there is the problem of the freaks who live on the cliffs where the pigs can’t go. Consequently, the place is a very unhealthy environment.

  Bacon sandwiches were sold down on the beach.

  Goa was a weirdly beautiful experience, but there was something very menacing about it, and I was impatient to get out.

  The nicest people we’d met in Goa, and the most sane, were the orange people, the Sinyassins, who studied under Bagwhan Rajneesh. I found myself thinking we should go and see a bloody guru, as we were in India.

  I had in mind a story about three Irishmen who went to Rome and had an audience with the Pope. He asked the first one “How long are you going to be in Rome?”

  “A year” replied the man.

  “Then you will find something out about Rome’, said the Pope.

  “Two weeks” replied the second.

  ”Then you will definitely discover something here.”

  The last man said “Just this afternoon, your Holiness.” And the Pope nodded, “You will see all of Rome.”

  I had this feeling that if I’m in a place just for a very brief time, I will see everything; all that I have come to see. We had just six weeks, and I had to recognize that I was just a tourist, that I wasn’t going to immerse myself seriously. So we went to Poona, where Rajneesh’s followers had gathered around him in a colony.

  I had an ambivalent attitude towards the Guru mentality. The followers of Rajneesh make excessive claims about him which he doesn’t in fact make about himself, such as ‘This is The Lord walking among us on the Earth’. Whatever the truth might be, I had no strong feelings either way. My response to such claims was ‘OK, I wouldn’t mind if Jesus Christ did come back; maybe it is him. I’d be happy with that.’ I simply wanted to understand what the whole Guru scene was about.

  At Poona I began by being an onlooker, just hanging about. I spent a lot of time speaking to an Indian guy who had been one of Bagwhan’s earliest followers, but had been booted out of the Ashram. I thought that was a good sign; it is important that a Master can tell people to go away and think for themselves. if they are clinging, limpet-like, to him.

  We went along to a couple of the classes. As we were dancing around the room, holding hands, I thought ‘This is great’. But suddenly the leader gestured us all to the ground; everybody sank to the floor, and he proclaimed “Bow down to Bagwhan.”

  ‘Fuck this!’ I thought, and felt rebellion rising in me, cutting me off from the group. I felt quite jealous of Bagwhan; I realized I would have liked to be him, to be the Big One, to have the glory.

  We had only a week there, and we couldn’t get into the encounter group without becoming Sinyassins; but one was allowed to ask a question of the Master, submitted in written form along with a photo of oneself. It was said that from one’s ‘aura’, from the physical impression in the photograph, he could gain some insight into the questioner and tell what sort of existence his soul had and where it came from in the Cosmos. Or whatever.

  We had our photos taken, wrote out our respective questions, and sent it to him in an envelope. My challenge to him was was a drawing of one half of a temple along with the question “This is one half of a temple; where is the other half?”

  What I really meant of course was ‘I can see all this around me, but where is the rest of it, where is it coming from?’

  He sent me a really dumb answer: “It is a mystery. Go in and find out for yourself.” But as I thought about it, I realized it was actually a very good reply. It was honest.

  So I went to hear him speaking. He was a brilliant speaker, but unfortunately at that time he was giving Hindu talks. There he was, talking away in Hindi, all his orange people sitting around him. Everyone said that it was enough just to be there, that there was no need actually to understand the language.

  He has an impressive technique of looking intently at every person in the audience; he scanned people with the most incredible effect. Some murmured breathlessly “He looked at me!” The sense of awe was real enough. There was a great calmness about him, mesmeric and very striking, a quality of control, fascinating to observe.

  Other gurus tend to overdo the effects; too many flowers, for instance, but there was evidence of a brilliant tastefulness all through the Ashram; he had the balance just right, everything, right down to the literature, was perfectly done.

  When he rose to leave, all his followers rushed forward, some to kiss the spot on which he had been sitting; and again, I was repelled by their excessively submissive reactions.

  So I left Poona with ambivalent feelings. On the one hand I thought it was great that people were doing what they wanted, and in many ways his philosophy suited my own thinking; he seemed to have drawn bits from many places, from Zen, from Sufi dances, from various therapies and massage techniques. But still I felt it was not for me, the Ashram was not my kind of trip.

  My friend Addy tried to remonstrate; “well, look, why not become a bloody Sinyassin,” he reasoned, “You don’t have to really mean it. Just find out what it’s about – join the Ashram.”

  Thinking he failed to understand my objection, I explaine
d that I couldn’t even consider swearing an oath without meaning it. But he insisted “But why won’t you? Because that way you’ll find out. You don’t have to bind yourself.”

  I didn’t quite see what he was driving at then; but I do now. I would go and join them, swear as a means to an end. Because what does it really mean? Locked in my western mental attitude, I couldn’t swear an oath lightly, but the eastern mind is different.

  As soon as we reached Bombay, I felt the same sickening reaction: ‘We’ve only got a few weeks left and we’re stuck in this bloody city!’ I hated it; once you’re there, you can’t seem to get out, chaos seems to take control. In desperation, we went to the station.

  Bombay Station is one of the biggest in the world. It’s actually several stations. The platforms are miles long; the trains themselves stretch on endlessly. Everyone in India travels by train and the rail system is consequently immensely profitable; it is about the only one in the world which makes such a profit, simply because the whole nation depends on it.

  We hoped to catch the Bombay/Delhi train, but a ticket wasn’t to be had for love or money. I scoured the entire station, tried all the ticket offices. Nothing. Then I had a flash of inspiration: ‘You’ve got to bribe them! This is India, the land of Baksheesh; get it out and you’ll have your ticket.’

  I didn’t know the art of bribery, but I returned to all the ticket offices, offering backhanders. The answer was still the same. Obviously, a ticket was not available at any price.

  In India, there is a caste of people who are porters. They are giants, some almost seven feet tall, and they wear gorgeous scarlet turbans and clothes so that they are visible from a good way off. They arrive in the train where you are sitting, and you have only to raise a finger, and they have your bags – a colossal load of bags – on their shoulders, backs, heads, in their hands. It is humbling to watch such masters at work.

  That morning I found myself watching an exceptionally gigantic porter, and thought ‘He’s the Boss.’ He was a magnificent-looking individual, like a huge Pathan tribesman from the Himalayas. He spoke no English, so I commandeered a translator.

  I wanted a ticket and I required two berths – I reckoned that was the minimum we’d need on a thirty-six hour journey – one for myself, and one for Mairi and the baby.

  So we negotiated a price, and he nodded in agreement. In sign language, like that for the deaf and dumb, he indicated that I should stay where I was and that he would return. Pointing to the clock and imitating a hand going around, he signalled that we should stay there for an hour. And off he went.

  An hour later, he returned and signed with his hands that we should all move up to a certain point on the platform – Mairi, the baby, me, and the bags, through thousands of people waiting on a huge long platform; no train yet in sight.

  The place was mobbed. After some distance, he indicated to Mairi ‘You stand here’, leaving her with the bags; then he motioned for me to continue, emphasizing that I should bring my jacket.

  All the way up the platform, through an endless sea of people, we kept walking, and walking. Then he gestured: ‘Stop here’.

  A train was arriving. It was several trains, engine after engine, vast and seemingly endless, perhaps three-quarters of a mile long. It rolled into the station at about ten miles an hour. I watched its approach, and as it went past the end of the platform up ahead, an Indian managed to grasp the door rail, with at least fifteen others hanging on to him and to other rails. But he couldn’t get in, and they were all fighting and kicking, punching out at each other, hysterical because they were fighting for their families, fighting to get space on that train. As every door came level with the end of the platform, the same scrum erupted, while the train continued to roll.

  Wordless with amazement, I watched all these people throwing themselves against the moving train, and I thought ‘Hell! Someone’s going to be crushed; why hasn’t anyone been killed?’ But maybe they do, perhaps people are killed all the time in just that way.

  At the same time, I was hyperventilating, getting ready, sucking in great gulps of air, thinking ‘I’m going to have to be up this’, but with a sinking sense of despair as engine after engine rolled relentlessly past.

  My big turbaned companion noted this and gestured ‘No, no; calm down. No problem.’

  The tumult continued as the train trundled by, bodies leaping at each oncoming door like hornets, and it went on and on and on. And then, suddenly, there was a lull, when the energy seemed to evaporate. In this same instant, my wise companion sprang into action – and we leapt into the train!

  The carriage was full of all sorts of people running up and down, struggling to find berths; others were sitting with their legs hung over their cases and across the neighbouring seats in an attempt to reserve them. My guide motioned me to go with him, and we pushed our way down a long corridor. In a compartment towards the end, a really cheeky-looking urchin, no more than eight, was lying on top of a berth, with his foot stretched over onto the opposite one. These were our berths.

  I jumped onto one of these and flung my jacket onto the other, and amid the frenzied scrabbling all around just lay there holding the position with the scarlet porter standing beside me.

  With a jolt, the train stopped. And there was Mairi, directly opposite. Incredible! I was so impressed, I gave the porter double the baksheesh.

  We only had two little luggage racks, but in India with even that space you feel like an emperor. The train filled up – and I mean filled up; there were people in the toilet, in the corridor, everywhere. The doors were permanently open because people were hanging out of them. And in the middle of all this, whole families were doing their cooking. People were lying against people like sardines. Indians don’t appear to care much about body space, but I felt I needed at least a luggage berth or I would go insane. I may have felt like an emperor, but I also felt very, very harassed in that train. It was like a living nightmare.

  Although the train was travelling, it stopped every fifteen minutes; sometimes it was totally dark outside with no lights, but always there were immense crowds of people walking up and down constantly, selling things, trying to get children to want sweets or some bauble. We stood out because of our white skins and were hassled particularly.

  At one of these stops, a very affluent, would-be powerful woman of the Brahmin caste entered our apartment. Obviously accustomed to being in a position of authority, she demanded a share of our luggage rack. Being high-caste, she would not normally have been in such a position, but I was not in a mood to make exceptions.

  “Chello!” I told her flatly. ‘Chello’ means ‘fuck off’. All the lower caste passengers loved it; a ripple of applause spread through the compartment.

  I had heard stories of people who returned to their seats to find some guy had sneaked in, demanding a share of the seat. Everyone else was squashed together, and I had a whole luggage rack to myself. I was constantly fending invaders off with my feet; if they got their arse on the seat, it was theirs. Going to the bog on that journey was quite a trial; you have to make elaborate arrangements to make sure your seat is covered.

  As I was sleeping, I must have pulled my feet up; when I awoke, an Indian had sneaked a little space at the end of the luggage rack. I couldn’t get him off; he didn’t get any further on, but I never got rid of him.

  We fixed a kind of hammock out of a bit of cloth tied to the two racks and hanging from one side of the car to the other, and we had the baby between us.

  And so the journey wore on: stops every fifteen minutes, the incessant movement of countless bodies up and down, no lights, people stepping over one another while clutching trays holding cups of liquid. I felt I was nearing insanity and would go berserk; the crush of humanity was too much.

  What I did was to imagine I was going a different way from the train. If I thought of it going one way and myself another, the result was that I drifted out of my body in a funny way, as if it were hanging between the carria
ges. It seemed like a good preparation for astral travel.

  Everything became exquisitely beautiful; all the noises blended in, all the women chattering, deep throaty chants of “Chai, Chai” (tea, tea), the cattle and goats of the people living at the stations, the sound of the steam engines – it became a complex and intensely penetrating music, which I had to enjoy – or go mad.

  In Rajistan, we got a lift from a German named Henning in a VW van. He was like a raving maniac, but we needed a lift badly.

  “I haf been in India for years, but I haf to go and eat vestern food vonce a month!” He told us he would fly to Delhi and go to a european restaurant, no matter where he was, to get his monthly injection of european culture. “I hate ze India!” he announced. From time to time, he would run over dogs or small animals, callously and deliberately and brutally.

  We arrived at a small town one night; he had been driving like one possessed, hell bent, and Mairi was feeling increasingly sick in the back of the van. I put my foot down: “Look, we’ve got to stop. We’ve GOT TO STOP!” Although he was against stopping, we persuaded him to pull over and cut the engine.

  I said, “Let’s go for a walk; then Mairi can be sick, and we can drive on.”

  “Ach ya, is a good idea, ja, OK.”

  So we got out for a walk, with the baby in the striped Mothercare pushchair.

  It was a little Indian town where they hadn’t seen much of the West. Little Sheena had blue eyes and beautiful, startlingly white hair. The pushchair was like some exotic moonbuggy; all the local women thought it was an extraordinary device and wanted one. With her colouring, Sheena was actually a living representation of Krishna; it was like little Krishna had come to town, and he was in a high tech Mothercare pushchair.

  The attention we received was intense; Henning had never experienced anything like it before, as he’d been on his own and was, by comparison, unnoticed as he travelled. As we moved down the street, a swarm of kids ran about telling everybody “Look at that!” The villagers came out of their houses and followed us. It was like we were the Pied Piper of Hamlyn.

  After we’d reached the edge of town and turned around, Henning began to panic. “Why all zeez people? Valking after us?”

  It reminded me of the Pipe Band at Murrayfield countermarching during the interval of a rugby match; when they reached the end of the field, they had to turn by marching back through their own formation. The crowd was still moving with us and we had to reverse our steps through the masses of people, stepping high with heads up like royalty. I began really to enjoy it; so much so that I felt almost anonymous when we were away from the crowd later.

  An Indian pop star I met later told me that the only way to deal with so much attention is to enjoy it, use it for your own benefit. As he said, “when I travel I’m just as weird as you are; people will look at me, so I convert it into interior energy. I feed on their attention.”

  So I was wheeling the pushchair ahead of me, grinning and really getting a high out of it, while Henning was gabbling in a high-pitched voice, almost freaking out. Then we saw the van. It was surrounded by a similar crowd. As we came closer, there was Mairi behind it, trying to be sick, screaming “Get away! Get away!” trying weakly to fend off the people . But she couldn’t get enough space to be sick.

  “Look, Mairi,” I said firmly, “You’ve got to be sick. Go ahead and do it.”

  “But why are they all looking?” she screamed in anguish.

  “Why zeez people? Why all zeez people?” Henning gibbered frenziedly.

  Dispassionately, I told her “I’ll make some space for you. Just go ahead and be sick.”

  I pushed against the crowd. They were quite passive, not in the least aggressive. I simply put my hands against them and shoved firmly; soon I created a space of ten feet around the side of the Volkswagen van.

  Everyone fell silent and watched, fascinated, as Mairi threw up.

  Then Hennig shrieked “ I vant to get out of zis place!”

  As we drove away, I was thinking what a good thing the Mothercare pushchair turned out to be. If we’d brought a supply of them, what with the money we’d been offered for it, we could have made a fortune.

  Back in Bombay, we managed to get a room at the YMCA where I collapsed with exhaustion while Mairi did some shopping in a nearby market. I’d had enough and could not leave Bombay soon enough, but it was impossible to avoid spending some time there, and the YMCA seemed the best place; like Henning’s monthly injection of western culture, I suppose.