The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  Within minutes of the Rationalists’ exposé, the villagers were back in position, clustered round their master, who had started to cure the indisposed.

  First, a woman with a displeasing skin condition came up to be healed. Veiling her face with the hem of her violet ikat sari, she attempted to conceal the numerous pus-ridden sores. It being a small community, the villagers must all have known the woman well. But they leered forward all the same, for a better inspection of the disease.

  She appeared to be suffering from severe vitamin deficiency. A course of appropriate medication may well have expunged the affliction. The mystic examined the woman. Acting melodramatically to the gathering, he proclaimed she had offended Yakshi, the tree goddess, by chopping branches from a tree outside the village.

  “But, I had to take wood, to sell,” retorted the woman.

  “Do you want to be cured?” snapped the albino.

  “Yes, I will do anything.”

  The remedy was meted out. A folded sal leaf was passed to the diseased woman. It contained a teaspoon or two of potassium permanganate. She must wash her hands and feet with a few grains of the powder each morning. When there was no more left, she was to leave the village at dusk and spend the night meditating beneath the tree from which she had chopped wood. Even before she had paid the ten-rupee fee for the powder, the next client had come forward.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the magician asked the teenage mother who had placed her baby son at his feet.

  “He was bitten by a snake.”

  Shrouding the child’s head with a scrap of ocher-colored cloth, the albino murmured incantations.

  “The child will live,” he whispered, “but only if you follow my directions.”

  Trembling in the presence of a living god, the young woman agreed to obey the seer’s commands.

  “Take these special neem leaves and mix them with cow’s milk,” he explained. “Warm the mixture and let it stand overnight before you feed the drink to the child.”

  The woman was ushered away.

  I nudged Bhalu to ask him what was wrong with the godman’s next patient. But he had no time to translate. He was making his own way over to the magical carpet, in search of treatment.

  “Bhalu!” I called. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”

  The Trickster turned.

  “He’s still got my ten rupees,” he replied. “I’m seeing him on account!”

  SEVENTEEN

  Disneyland of the Soul

  Almost six weeks had passed since Feroze had ordered me from the house. Although still a daunting duty, the journey of observation was making some headway. I had met a selection of curious characters, including a supposed witch, an albino godman, not to mention many intrepid foot-soldiers from a Secret Army. Each evening, before going to sleep, I scribbled down a few words of the day’s encounters. The next day I would post them off to be examined by the magician. Wondering how my commentaries had been received, I decided to telephone Calcutta.

  The man at the telephone booth tucked away in Jagdalpur’s vegetable market licked the palm of his hand and ran it over the seat of a stool, begging me to sit. Then, tugging a frayed velvet cloth away to reveal a fine Bakelite telephone, he dialed the Master’s number. I pressed the receiver to my ear.

  A conversation in English was already occupying the line.

  “Gangu,” said the first voice, “how are the preparations going for the murders?”

  “Very well, sir,” said the second, “very well indeed. Everything under control.”

  “Who will be doing the killing?”

  “The vampires will, isn’t that what you wanted, sir?”

  “OK. But do the vampires have their own costumes?”

  “Yes, sir, affirmative, they are looking very nice!”

  “Why don’t we hire a dwarf vampire … it would be a great touch.”

  Vampire dwarfs? What a monstrous idea. I had to tell someone of the murderous plan. But who to inform? I was just about to ask the telephonist’s advice when I caught more of the sinister conversation:

  “But Gangu, make sure the vampires have very fine, pointed teeth. That’s imperative. Everyone will be watching them closely.”

  “Yes, boss, they will all be given proper sets of vampire dentures.”

  Vampires without their own teeth? I pressed the receiver closer to my ear to make sense of the chat:

  “Well done, Gangu, it sounds good … what time shall we begin the shoot?”

  “Sir, the extras will turn up at eight o’clock, and the lighting crew an hour or so before.”

  As I wiped my brow with relief, the telephonist managed to make the connection to Feroze’s mansion.

  “Halloooo?”

  “Gokul, is that you?”

  “Yes, it me. What name of your party?”

  “This is Tahir Shah … Gokul, greetings from Jagdalpur. Can I speak with the Master?”

  A pause followed as the jumble of voices encroached again.

  “No, Tahir Shah Sahib,” Gokul yelled. “Master not in Alipore … Master on journey.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “He gone for long time …”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Out of Calcutta … Master having business outside West Bengal.”

  “But has he received my letters, Gokul, can you tell me that?”

  “Tahir Shah Sahib,” shouted the elderly manservant, “Master not read letters … he been away long time. Very busy.”

  “Feroze had not mentioned that he planned to leave Calcutta for an extended trip. As I squatted on the saliva-coated stool, I thought of the cozy study, with its soft carpet, its clutter of trophies and its bookshelves. It seemed a million miles from the telephone booth at Jagdalpur. Thinking of it brought on a wave of homesickness for the mansion and its appalling regime.

  The telephonist watched me as I stared into space. He was waiting to be handed a wad of rupee notes, but was in no great hurry for payment.

  “What you do now?” he asked.

  “Continue on my journey,” I said. “You see, I'm on a journey of observation … looking for the unusual.”

  The telephonist nodded.

  “Laxmi Circus very nice,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  Replacing the velvet kerchief squarely over his precious telephone, he opened a drawer, pulled out a flier and passed it over. It was headed: Laxmi’s Circus and popcorn.

  “Is it any good?”

  The man licked his lips and cackled menacingly.

  “First class,” he said.

  The telephonist’s high recommendation had been an introduction too enticing to overlook. I spent the next day with Laxmi’s popcorn chef and the troupe, which was performing to a full house each night. It seemed to enjoy a far-reaching reputation. Even those unimpressed by the routines were won over by the circus’ other sly crowd-puller: free popcorn for all.

  Bhalu accompanied me, albeit reluctantly. He had spent most of the night guzzling country liquor in a truck driver’s drinking hole, and was severely hung-over.

  Unsure of what acts had brought such fame to the Laxmi’s Circus, I approached their heavily patched, grubby marquee with some trepidation. The Trickster entered the tent to announce our arrival. A minute or two passed. Bhalu emerged, his face pale with dread. Five more minutes went by. Then, slowly, the canvas entrance flap was drawn back by an attractive girl. I smiled, taking in the attributes of her unexpected appearance. Aged about fourteen, she was crouching low on the ground. Nothing odd about that. Yet I couldn’t help noticing that the peculiarities ran deeper than her posture. The girl had lovely features. Her lips had been painted with cherry-red gloss; her eyes had been lined with kohl; her nose was pierced with a silver pin. And she had two heads. I rubbed my eyes. She still had two heads, four eyes, a pair of noses and twenty fingers. Bhalu was sure his hangover was playing tricks on him. When I jabbed him in the small of the back, he explained that we had come to sp
eak to the troupe’s members.

  Anila and Amrita had been born to a villager near Nagpur in central India. They were joined by a thick band of tissue at the sternum. On realizing she had given birth to conjoined – “Siamese” – twins, what she assumed to be a monster, their mother had drunk poison. Their father assumed the girls were the incarnation of some malevolent spirit. Fearing the wrath of the supernatural, he resolved not to kill them. Instead, he shoved the new-born babies into a sack and hurried with them to Nagpur. The girls were sold from one unscrupulous freak dealer to the next.

  “We were shown at circuses across India,” said Anila, brushing her long hair. “The owners would burn our arms with cigarettes to make us move.”

  “If we cried out,” said Amrita, continuing where her sister left off, “we would be beaten. If one wept, the other was punished. When we were ten, a circus owner sold us to a brothel.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In Chennai, Madras,” muttered Anila. “We were locked in a room not much bigger than the bed. Men would come all night to sleep with us. They found us strange. We screamed every night.”

  “When our screams disturbed the other girls,” persisted Amrita, “the pimp would bring a knife and threaten to cut us apart.”

  Amrita paused to rub rouge into her cheeks. Like her sister, she had a soft, feminine complexion. Both their faces appeared to have been lightened with bleaching cream.

  “Did you escape from the brothel?”

  “After two years,” said Anila, “its owner said we weren’t bringing in enough money. So he threw us out into the street in Chennai. We were forced to beg for a living. Then, one day, Laxmi heard about us … he asked us to work with him and the others.”

  “Is Laxmi here today?”

  Amrita pointed a foot to a very ordinary-looking man standing nearby.

  “Go and talk to him, “ she said.

  So I did.

  Laxmi was of average build and very hirsute. His hands were large, but not excessively so. His lower jaw was as angular as a set-square, with a bristly mole on its left side. When I asked him what his performance entailed, he said he ate things.

  A man with a digestive tract like no other, Laxmi’s stage routine was to gulp down whatever the audience threw up to him. Razor blades, nails, door knobs and shoe horns, they found their way into Laxmi’s stomach on a nightly basis. Some items would be regurgitated after the act, others would proceed through his intestines.

  As an amateur who had toyed with swallowing stones, I could only pay homage to the true maestro. Laxmi had made an art form out of what was for me a deeply unpleasant activity.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, explaining how he got started, “I used to swallow things for fun. At first I swallowed coins and paperclips to make my friends laugh. Then I tried nuts and bolts, marbles, door hinges, keys and belt buckles. The more I swallowed, the more I liked it.”

  Laxmi’s expertise at swallowing large or sharp-edged objects was impressive. My ingestion of smooth pebbles paled in comparison. I was about to ask him what his most impressive feat of swallowing had been but, quite suddenly, he excused himself. He had a touch of indigestion.

  Noticing that the swallower had disappeared, Anila and Amrita crawled over, and introduced us to two veteran members of the circus.

  The first was a turbaned hulk of a man with a walrus mustache. Pressing his hand to mine, he wasted no time in demonstrating his skill. He fell down on all fours and performed twenty faultless press-ups. Then, clambering to his feet, he instructed Bhalu and me to examine his forehead. We did so. Miniature beads of perspiration were forming in the furrowed ridges of his brow. But this was no ordinary sweat. It was black. As the inky droplets joined up and ran towards the great mustache, I examined the man’s face very carefully. Although there was no way of telling, I felt sure that this colored sweat was nothing more than an illusion. Perhaps he had painted his skin with a transparent chemical which reacted with the sweat. I would ask Feroze for his opinion when we next spoke.

  The second turbaned man – called Vikram Singh – then demonstrated his expertise. In his left hand he held an illuminated glass light-bulb. The bulb, which was flickering gently, wasn’t plugged into a socket. When he handed the bulb to me it ceased giving light. As far as I could see there was no battery concealed in the base. For his second feat, Vikram Singh unbuttoned his shirt. He stooped to remove a selection of household objects from a tattered cardboard box. A couple of spoons, a kitchen sieve, a saucepan lid and a bottle opener: one by one, he pressed the items to his chest. Rather than falling to the ground, the items stuck to his torso. I inspected each of them. There was no apparent sign of adhesive. Even so, I thought that, like his associate, Vikram Singh’s skills were nothing but crafty conjury.

  As we wandered away from the marquee, Anila and Amrita begged Bhalu to drop by after the show. Both seemed to have taken a fancy to him, and were flirting outrageously. Rather than ignoring their affections, he was thrilled at the prospect of entertaining two girls at once.

  “How dare you even contemplate leading them on!” I growled, as we moved away from the marquee.

  The Trickster licked his palms and pressed down his dirty hair. Soon he would be locked in a passionate embrace … like none other. I reminded him that he was getting himself into hot water. Sordid relations with conjoined sisters might, for all we knew, be breaking the law.

  Bhalu twisted round to wave to the girls. Once they had shuffled inside, he turned his attention to me.

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Bhalu look at what you’re saying … I’m having nothing to do with this.”

  “You’re just jealous!” he said.

  * * * *

  The following morning, Bhalu was eager to relate the details of his nocturnal encounter with the conjoined sisters. Insisting I had no interest in his sordid love life, I dressed and left the guest house in a huff. I would be taking the noon bus to Kottagudem. If the Trickster didn’t appear at the bus stop, I would be only too delighted to leave without him.

  Traveling with a twelve-year-old, who acted like a washed up middle-aged rock star, was not an easy experience. Again, I found myself questioning what had induced the boy to tag along. It wasn’t as if I were supporting him. He was always adamant that he paid his way – albeit in black money. And it wasn’t as if I was an affable companion. I treated him like a menopausal mother would have done. I shouted him down when he gave his opinion; ridiculed him in public for his manners; and ordered him about as if he were a serf. Sooner or later I knew I would discover the reasoning behind his decision to accompany me.

  After an hour of hanging around at the town’s main bus stop, a dilapidated Tata bus rolled up. The front two tires were hissing unnervingly. Never one to let a trivial puncture or two get in the way, the driver set off at considerable speed. Bhalu had not turned up. Maybe, I ruminated, his tryst the night before had been true love. If the relationship led to wedlock, was a marriage to conjoined sisters considered to be bigamy?

  The bus pushed southwards, crossing one river after the next, slicing through the fertile agricultural lands of the Sabari Valley. The horrific drought of Orissa was nothing but a memory. Every fifteen minutes the driver would jam on the brakes. His assistant, a fawning reprobate of a man wearing a fine coral necklace, would jump down and pump air into the perforated tires. The regular stops more than doubled our journey time.

  On the few occasions that the vehicle managed to gather speed, I thought about the riddle of colored sweat. Then I wondered what had happened to the Trickster. Would I ever see him again? Perhaps he had decided to head back to Calcutta, where he belonged.

  Shortly before dusk, the bus – which had not been in fit shape to undertake the journey in the first place – had ground to a halt at the town of Borgampad, about thirty-five kilometers from Kottagudem. We were now in Andhra Pradesh. The driver announced that all the passengers were invited to pass the night in the vehicle, be
cause of a major puncture. When I offered to help put on the spare wheels, the driver laughed feebly. Of course, there were no spares.

  Descending into the dispersing light, in search of a meal, I found refuge at an outdoor roadside cafe. A series of paraffin gas burners bathed the area in phosphorescent light. The air was thick with moths. A man in a lungi and T-shirt bearing an image of the Mona Lisa swaggered over and slapped a thick paneer-filled pancake in front of me.

  As I sank my teeth into the fritter, I noticed a robed figure slouching beneath a banyan tree, adjacent to the cafe. His forehead was masked in a large barberry-red tilak, outlined in white; his form was caped in yellow; and his neck was thick with wilting mogra blossom. The flowers, the red tilak and the yellow dress: all were the emblems of a sadhu who follows Rama.

  There was something else about the old sadhu at Borgampad which struck me. His kamandal, the ritualistic water vessel carried by all sadhus, was extraordinary. Generally crafted from wood, gourds, brass or steel, the traditional water containers are revered as sacred objects in themselves. But the one held in the hands of the Rama sadhu was quite unusual. It was fashioned from a coconut of the enchanting coco-de-mer palm.

  Native only to the island of Praslin, in the Seychelles, the coco-de-mer is one of the most astounding of all trees. The coconuts, which closely resemble the shape of a female pelvis, take seven years to mature. Their similarity to the female form may explain some of the wondrous properties which have been ascribed to them. Well designed to cross the turbulent waters of the Indian Ocean, the distinct double nuts have been washed up on the beaches of India’s west coast for centuries.