Quicksand Tales

by Keggie Carew

  ‘Enjoy?’ Ajai asks expectantly, as we arrive at the car.

  ‘Oh yes, thank you Ajai.’

  Ajai is a miracle. Every morning, clean white shirt and smiling face. He tells us his wife in Delhi is expecting their first child.

  ‘You want a boy or girl, Ajai?’

  ‘Oh, boy,’ he smiles.

  Ajai and his wife live with Ajai’s mother, and his elder brother, Hrithik. Ajai’s father died when he was sixteen. Ajai’s brother works in a bank and is very highly qualified. Ajai is extremely proud of his brother. Hrithik’s English is very very good, not like Ajai’s, Ajai says. Ajai’s sister is married to man in Bikaner. Ajai’s marriage was love marriage. His sister’s was arranged marriage. Ajai’s mother, I am shocked to learn, is younger than me.

  It is good fun driving with Ajai. Chillies, wedding, pickled, fair, I have cut myself, colonial power, beautiful actress, sieve, wild flower, economy, mutiny, pillion, chewing gum, global warming, moustache. We tell Ajai we don’t want to eat where the tourists eat and where the Morris Oxfords park. We want to eat at the roadside stops where Indians eat. And so we do. We have curry dhal and rice at dusty shacks, sitting on upturned crates, encircled by small bands of children. We are watched like a tennis match, they close in, then run away again. They have a mischievous quality I like. Skinny-limbed; big toothy smiles; little grown-ups. There are children I’d like to take home with me. Or maybe just their easy joy. A tiny bottle of hotel shampoo thrills them. I tell them not to drink it. You can easily loathe yourself here.

  As each mile goes past, camel, barber, refrigerator, dead dog, India works its way across our eyes, our skin, our thinking. And defecation is in my thinking a lot. Shit, and the passing thereof. It’s omnipresent, people ducking down, straddling their buttocks over a ditch, in the street, next to their market stall. Each morning the fields are sown with people in flagrante delicto. Here, there, everywhere, a polka-dot technique. No long-drop. No latrine. And while everything is cheap in India, little is free, except dust, so I can’t help wondering why there is no commerce in shit. Five to six hundred million freshly laid evacuations a day. Soft brown buns. Strictly vegetarian. In England, in the 1900s, outdoor privies were emptied into pits, layered with ash or lime and dug out by the men in the village once a year, then spread across the allotments. They called it black gold. So I cannot for the life of me work out why, in a land of so many businessmen, there is no business in this. I try to discuss it with Ajai, in a delicate way.

  ‘Ajai, why does everyone, um, why don’t they, er . . . you know, because there are no, um, er, bathrooms, and the people have to go, er, outside, so, why don’t they collect it in one place, then use it as fertiliser for the fields?’

  He nods sideways.

  ‘You know? Food for vegetables,’ I explain. ‘Is it for religious reasons?’ I suggest.

  He nods sideways again. I tell Ajai I am not sure what the sideways nod means. Is it yes or no or don’t know, or is it ironic? Does it express some kind of discomfort, or disagreement?

  ‘What you mean, sideways?’ he asks.

  I don’t like to do the nod myself, but now I must. I do it quickly, sort of wobble my head. Jonathan is looking at me, and by his expression, I can tell, not very impressed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ajai says. Then he says his brother, Hrithik, is very good businessman, very highly qualified.

  In Pushkar we try to find some peace and walk away from the town. We take a track through a plantation of rose bushes. A flock of children follow us, Rupee, rupee. Barefooted ragamuffins. We tell them we have no rupees and walk on, but nothing deters them, they whoosh around us like a wave around a rock. Rupee, rupee. Behind us, in front of us. We give them sweets. They don’t want sweets, Rupee, rupee. We quicken our pace. We just want half an hour, half an hour, to ourselves. We walk doggedly on and eventually shake most of them off. Except one. A tiny, skinny, persistent girl, dust-blended skin, hair in a matted lump. Rupee, rupee mister, fifty, fifty.

  ‘Fifty!’ We walk on.

  She pops up in front of us. Rupee, rupee. Then beetles off to intersect us at the bottom of the field. Now she has a rose to sell us. Rupee, rupee, she holds out the rose. We shake our heads. Oh God, we do. A horrible slow patronising NO shake. Yet she pesters us all the way back; her tenacity is incredible, but we don’t give in. Not even at the bitter end as she reaches the end of her track and watches us disappear into town. I think of this girl at night, between my clean white sheets, her large liquid eyes, trying everything, not giving up, trying to sell us her stolen rose. What have I become?

  *

  India does not shut up. She whispers in your head. All day. Worries at you. You even – yes! – try to work her out. Even when you laugh at yourself for doing so. Then you realise you have begun to call her her. Where does one begin with India? Too big, too broken, too holy. Too too. Why would one begin at all? Because she won’t roll over. Because at night your dreams are technicoloured, because infuriating, unwieldy, tormenting as she is, she gnaws away at you. Because she lays a million eyes on your tawdry soul.

  In Jaipur we grind to a halt in a funnel of traffic, a man walks past bent double with a sack (the size of a baby elephant) of rose petals on his back.

  Sometimes Ajai is happy with his accommodation and sometimes he is not. Every hotel so far, as Jonathan predicted, provides a room for the drivers and a meal. I interrogate Ajai each morning on the quality of his board and ask him to give it a mark out of ten. Sometimes he just jiggles his head sideways (I’m still not sure what this means). But today there is no holding back.

  ‘Accommodation very bad.’

  ‘Oh no. Why?’

  ‘Very bad.’

  ‘Why? How, Ajai?’

  ‘Very dirty.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Very dusty.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Not even a room,’ he says. ‘What is it called? For a horse?’

  ‘A stable,’ I say.

  ‘I am not a horse.’

  ‘No, Ajai. You are not a horse.’

  This is bad news. Because we like this hotel very much indeed. Rohet Garh is our one taste of luxury, of dilapidated luxury, but luxury nevertheless. We want to stay two more nights and stop looking at forts, so we can swim in the marble swimming pool, and drink gin and tonic on the veranda, and dine outside on the terrace under the marble porticos, and cavort about in our ginormous room. There is a lake, and peacocks, and rattan chairs all over the lawn and Bruce Chatwin stayed here for a whole winter writing The Songlines, and they have said I can ride one of their beautiful white Marwari horses with the strange curly ears.

  ‘What do we do about Ajai?’ I ask Jonathan.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘Should we talk to someone?’

  ‘You must be joking,’ he says, looking at me as if I’m mad. ‘They won’t do anything. He can go off for a couple of days if he wants. He’ll be fine.’

  At dusk, the ghostly meowings of peacocks falling from trees.

  The beauty of the hotel outweighs the discomfort of thinking about the discomfort of Ajai. And I try not to think about him as we glide about, and swim in the marble pool with a blue lotus flower mosaic on the bottom, and sip gin and tonic in rattan chairs, amongst potted palms and sepia photographs of maharajahs and dead tigers. In The Hindu Times I read about the new roaring trade in surrogacy – because adoption is a long and laborious process, and to qualify you have to adhere to the Hindu faith. There are 44 million destitute children in India, and 12 million in orphanages.

  I go for a ride with the groom who rides one of the maharajah’s stallions. A man stands to greet us in a field with a generator on his head.

  In Jodhpur, Ajai is happy, very very happy. And so are we. He is pleased with the drivers’ accommodation. We are staying in an airy old guesthouse near the bazaar, with a view across the labyrinth of blue-washed flat roofs towards the gigantic Mehrangarh Fort, its red sandstone ramparts risi
ng sheer out of the 400-foot-high cliff. The guesthouse restaurant is on the roof and the afternoon is warm so we sit outside with Ajai and have a cold beer. The sky is full of soaring swifts. I am quizzing the waiter. He works seven days a week; his family lives seven hours away by bus, he has a baby son. He visits his family once a month, on Sunday.

  We go to the bazaar. There is a man selling a broken umbrella. And a man selling pigment, each bright colour heaped into a miraculously tall holy lingam, erect and side-by-side, a rainbow line of phalluses. A man laughs wisely, telling us we are the honey pot and they are the butterflies. And wandering through this landscape in a time apart – ubiquitous, doe-eyed, caramel-coloured, large-humped, unflustered, horns in a crescent moon: the holy cow. In Cow Dimension. Where the rules do not apply. We buy a street barbecue made out of a cooking-oil tin. A tiny bottle of perfume. A papaya. We step over rag bundles. Past rheumy eyes.

  Back on the roof, the waiter intercepts my papaya and whisks it away to peel. Ten minutes later he brings me a roman aqueduct on a plate, a hundred orange moons fanned out, sprinkled with cumin and fresh limes. I thank him with lots of adjectives, he waits, Jonathan thanks him with rupees. The waiter teaches me the Hindu for banana, kala; bread, roti; view, drashya. He writes in my notebook, app se milana achaha raha – very nice to meet you. Another waiter refills my coffee, and dhanybad, thank you, helps me with my pronunciation. The first waiter tells him to clear the table at the back.

  Tonight, Ajai has agreed to eat with us on the roof. We can see the lights of a great palace thirty kilometres away gleaming through the amber dust. The waiter tells us its dining room seats a thousand guests. The sky is full of hunting bats. We are all happy. Ajai is tapping at his mobile phone. Then, with an enormous smile, he passes it to Jonathan and motions him to listen.

  There is a confused expression on Jonathan’s face. His pupils hop around jerkily like flies. Then he slowly begins to nod. His smile takes on a certain woodenness. But Ajai’s smile is broad and brimming. The faint sound coming out of Ajai’s phone is of a voice talking very fast. Ajai tells me it is his eldest brother, Hrithik, who is saying hello to Mr Jonathan. The minutes tick past. Jonathan is nodding. His beer grows warm. We watch and wait. Ajai’s eyes glitter in rapt expectation. Jonathan says, ‘Yes. Yes.’ Eventually Jonathan says, ‘Nice to talk to you, goodbye,’ and passes the phone back to Ajai. He doesn’t explain. Which is a bad sign.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘That was Ajai’s brother,’ he smiles stiffly.

  ‘I know. What did he say?’

  He laughs uncomfortably. Our thali arrives. Ajai tells us Hrithik is very highly qualified. We dip chapatis into the various dishes of aubergine, potatoes, chillies and colourful chutneys. Enjoy!

  ‘What did he say?’ I ask Jonathan after we’ve gone to bed.

  ‘Oh God, I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

  ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jonathan groans. ‘He is coming to the UK. He wants a job in finance. He is very honoured. The whole family is honoured that Ajai is our driver. He wants to send me his CV for advice. It’s only a matter of time before his visa comes through. Then he is able to marry. He wants an English girl. How does he find a good English girl? He knows I will give him good advice. Ajai says we are good philosophy people. Then he can take care of his mother and be a good family head.’

  ‘He told you all that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why does he want to marry an English girl?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And where is he planning to stay when he comes to the UK?’ I ask warily.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Oh, well, just ignore it.’

  The next morning Ajai is in a very quiet mood. Did Jonathan not live up to his brother’s expectations?

  ‘What’s wrong, Ajai?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Very bad.’

  ‘What is very bad?’

  ‘Very bad news.’

  ‘What news? Is your wife okay?’

  ‘Yes, wife okay. My sister husband made suicide last night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Yes. Very bad.’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry, Ajai.’

  ‘Terrible, terrible.’

  Ajai explains it is especially bad for his sister because she is newly married and her husband’s family will think she has brought bad luck into the house. We say this is ridiculous. He says that is what they will think. They will blame her.

  ‘You must go home, Ajai.’

  ‘No, no. It is for her husband’s family to decide.’

  ‘But how is your sister?’

  ‘Very bad.’

  ‘But why did he commit suicide?’

  Ajai rocks his head.

  ‘Ajai, if you need to go home, you must go. We can find another driver. We can sort it with your boss.’

  ‘No, no, I am your driver.’

  A silent Ajai drives us 200 miles west from Jodhpur to the desert at Jaisalmer; from Jaisalmer, we drop south-east to the Jain temple at Ranakpur with its 1,444 marble pillars, each one carved with a different floral motif. The personable owner of our hotel says he will find us a guide to walk the twenty miles through the forest to the great fort at Kumbhalgarh, while Ajai can drive our bags the fifty-odd kilometres by windy road. He suggests before dinner we walk down to the lake. So we do.

  As we head off, a young boy attaches himself to us; with the memory of the girl and the rose we meekly tag along as he leads the way until a shimmering eye of water comes into view.

  ‘Whoa, whoa! Crocodile! Crocodile!’ I shout.

  I have just seen a massive, man-eating-sized crocodile slide into the lake only a few feet away. I almost trod on it. We watch, amazed and dumbstruck as it swims away, its black outline receding in silver mercury against the red mirrored sky. The boy smiles. Muggeramach, he teaches us. Now we are all pleased. We had no idea there were crocodiles in the lake. The hotel owner never mentioned it.

  ‘Muggeramach,’ I repeat. ‘Very nice word.’

  ‘Crocodile, crocodile,’ says the boy.

  The boy walks back to the hotel with us for his reward. We are good friends now. But when we arrive he doesn’t want to come in, he wants to wait outside. I insist he comes in. I want to share our excitement and news with the hotel owner. I excitedly tell the owner we have just seen a muggermach. He narrows his eyes. He questions the boy. The boy is nervous. The boy replies, his eyes down, his palms flat together, fingers pointing towards his chin. Not the back-patting scenario I’d imagined. Then suddenly the boy prostrates himself on the floor and reaches out to touch the owner’s feet. Now I understand why the boy did not want to come in, it is not his place to come in, he is not supposed to come in. But we are watching, and so the owner stops the boy. He knows what we will think. Yet we are thinking it nevertheless. The owner tells us we are very fortunate to have seen a crocodile, for he has never seen one. There are only two crocodiles in the lake, one large, and one small. He says you can go to the lake every day for a year and not see one. Outside we give the boy some rupees and he runs away.

  The next morning we are up before dawn to meet our guide, and have to step over the four waiters and three hotel staff asleep on the restaurant floor.

  Bhima, our tiny forest guide, calls deer jungly cow, jungly cow. He points to footprints in the sand, and speaks charmingly in nouns. Just after dawn we hear a commotion of animals and birds alarm-calling. Leopard, leopard, Bhima whispers. And there he is, behind a rock. Bhima is delighted, already the day is a success and we’ve only just begun.

  By late afternoon we have emerged from the forest and are walking through fields where hay is stored high in the trees like gigantic nests so the jungly cows cannot reach it. We see a young woman in a lime-green sari and saffron scarf perched like an exotic bi
rd at the top of a forty-foot tree, its trunk as slender as an arm. No ladder, no companion anywhere. With a machete, she cuts down branches for her goats below.

  By the time we arrive at Kumbhalgarh, Ajai’s big smile is waiting for us. The mighty walls of the fort stretch for twenty-two miles through the Aravalli hills, wide and strong enough for four elephants to travel abreast.

  The subject of Ajai’s tip has, in the last few days, grown more urgent in our private conversation. How much? That is the question. Soon we will arrive in Udaipur, our last stop. Ajai has already told us about the driver who was given $250 from a wealthy Canadian which enabled him to rent a shop and start up his own business. I believe we were told it innocently, but it has obviously gone down in driver-tip legend.

  ‘How much?’ I ask Jonathan.

  ‘Fifty?’

  ‘What, for two weeks?’

  ‘But that’s a lot in India.’

  ‘Not compared to his friend.’

  ‘Two hundred?’

  ‘Two hundred!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’

  I don’t know either. We go round and round. Jonathan is reading Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters and relates the episode where two men carry an old man home after he took a tumble on the pavement. His stepdaughter debates how much money she should give the men. How far had they carried him? How much did he weigh? Her papa’s price in baksheesh is calculated like a sack of wheat. What difference if they were carrying Papa or a gunny of rice? she argues. We laugh. It makes us feel better. Yet we come back to the matter of Ajai’s tip, time and time again.