by Smith, Skye
Maya picked up the paper and read them. She was about to set off on a journey to strange places with Marique. A journey where she was planning to seek more information about her aura. She made a decision. Marique had to know about her aura. All Marique currently knew was that she had one and that she could use it to make people feel horny. Over the next two weeks, she was going to have to educate her about the full power of her aura. Both the power to heal, and the power to kill.
Maya had given her an aura massage to help her get over her hangover yesterday. Marique had liked the feeling, liked it a lot. Maya went to the door and clicked it closed and joined Marique back on the bed. "You were right. There was no harm in his watching us, only in his being a sneak about it. How can we criticize the same curiosity we all felt when we were his age?"
"Were you going to give me another aura massage?" asked Marique. "Stronger this time."
"First, I must tell you about my aura, for it can be dangerous. One of the reasons I want to go to India is to find other people with strong auras and ask them for advice."
"Dangerous. 'ow dangerous?" Marique was now paying attention. "What are you talking about?"
"Remember that creep who attacked me on the trail to Wreck Beach in Vancouver?"
"Of course I remember. 'e was a nightmare come true. You were just lucky that he died of a heart attack."
"That's just it. Yes, he died of a heart attack, or something like it, but my aura caused the heart attack. My aura caused his death."
"Well, good for your aura." Marique went silent for a moment, thinking. "Oh, I see, you are afraid that if you make it too strong it may kill me. How does that work? How will I know when I 'ave 'ad too much?"
"I don't think it would ever kill you. It seems that it tries to do something about sickness. I have used it to heal sick people. Some very sick people. Everyone I talk to has a different theory about how it works. Some think my aura works like an antibiotic and kills the bad stuff. I like to think that it strengthens the immune system so that your own body can kill the bad stuff. It could be both or neither. That is what I must ask in India."
"So that explains why you asked Antoine to show you Dharamsala on the map. It is the Buddhist holy place. Go back to explaining the heart attack. What did that?"
Maya could see that they were already having translation problems about the concepts, so she decided to simplify the explanation. "I believe that some evil people have a sickness in the mind. My aura tries to cure this sickness, and maybe it works, but a side effect is that the person's brain like, freezes up. It looks like a heart attack, but it is actually a brain attack."
"Well if you ask me," said Marique, "I believe your explanation. When you massage me with your aura, my whole body feels good. Not just the skin, but deep down too. I can believe that it fighting sickness."
"So it's okay if we go to other places than Goa? It might be boring for you."
"India is never boring. Sometimes you hate it, and sometimes you love it, but boring, never." Marique stood up. "So, who have you healed, and of what?"
"Mostly women, older women. Mainly because of the effect my aura has on men. It's hard to heal someone when they are so horny that all they can think about is humping you. Mostly women’s things, although I helped one woman with her leukemia."
Marique opened her door and yelled down the hallway, "Mama, venir ici s'il vous plait." She turned back to Maya. "My mother quit smoking last summer. The doctors ordered it. She coughs less now, but she still coughs. I think eet is bad."
"No need to ask. Of course I will. Just explain to her that it may not help, but it will not hurt, okay?"
For the next hour, Marique watched Maya use her aura on her mother. Maya explained what she was doing all the time. "I sense dark grey in your throat, and in the bottom of your right lung, and light grey in your left lung." she said after the first ten minutes of exploring with her aura. "Please turn onto your stomach."
Marique was translating even when the words were simple. She did not want any misunderstanding. When Maya explored the back, she found similar spots of grey in the same places. Since it was easier to work on the back than the front, she told the mother to relax, or even go to sleep if she wanted.
She prayed and raised the power of her aura and then while holding her right wrist in her left hand she hovered her right hand over the places she had sensed the grayness. She told Marique to watch the clock and to tap her on the shoulder at the end of every minute, and not to let her continue for more than ten minutes at once. "This is vital. If you think something may be going wrong, then pull my hand away from your mother."
With the safety instructions given, Maya allowed her aura to do its own thing. She purposefully ignored it and concentrated instead on holding her hand still. The aura pushed everything but whiteness out of her mind. She felt a few taps but the whiteness still felt good. Suddenly something grabbed her wrist and pulled it sideways. She fluttered back to consciousness and opened her eyes.
There was a horrible sound filling the room. Someone was coughing, gagging. The woman on the bed was coughing, hanging off the bed and coughing. Marique was pulling a tray out from underneath a flower pot and putting on the floor. Maya tried to regain her mind. Finally she had enough sense to grab her elbows and draw her aura back.
"Marique, what has happened?"
"She went into a coughing fit. She began coughing up mucous, black mucous, so I put the tray under her mouth."
Maya started to pat the woman’s back. The woman was repeating something in French. "What did she say?"
"She says to hold her back from sliding to the floor, but to leave her low enough so that her lungs are upside down. She wants the liquid to drain out of her lungs."
Maya did not have the strength. She was weak and disoriented. Marique pushed her out of the way and held her mother from slipping to the floor.
"Should I get help?" Maya asked. She was starting to panic. The mucous the woman was spitting up looked vile.
"She says no. She wants to cough it out. She says this is a good thing. So long as there is no blood this is good."
Maya wobbled to the door, and then realized that she was not decent for the hallway and grabbed her robe, and then went to get a glass of water. On the way back she grabbed a half full bottle of French brandy from the liquor cabinet.
The father blocked her way up stairs. He had been watching TV while doing a crossword. He had questions in his eyes. "Marique says she doesn't need help. It is just a coughing fit. It is calming now?"
By the time she got back with the water and the brandy, it had calmed. Marique and her mother were both sitting on the bed. The mother was holding her breath trying to give a tickle in her throat the chance to calm. She grabbed at the bottle of brandy and took a swig and let it trickle down her throat. She looked at Maya and said in perfect English, "I want you to do that again. The same thing."
Marique gave her mom a hard stare. All this time her mom had been faking not knowing English. She wondered know, how much Flemish she actually knew.
"No," Maya replied sternly. "You will go to your own bed, and I will give you a gentle massage to put you to sleep. You can have more tomorrow. I am here for two more weeks. You can have more every day, but no more today."
"I agree," said Marique. She picked up the tray. "I am going to get a plastic sandwich bag and put a sample of this in it. We should take it to the doctor so he can send it to the lab." She looked at her mother. "What do you think it is?"
"It is my lungs cleaning themselves of twenty years of tar," replied her mother, in perfect English. "When I first stopped smoking, I would go for steam therapies and I would cough this up. I have not coughed this up now for months. This must be from very deep in my lungs." She looked around at Maya. "Tomorrow I will have my head closer to the edge of the bed, and I will have a bucket."
Maya sat on the bed and leaned against a pillow. She grabbed the brandy bottle and took a swig. She hated not knowing what she was
doing, not knowing what to expect. "Perhaps we should go to Dharamsala first. The people I want to talk to there are doing medical research and translations."
"Dharamsala is on the edge of the Himalayas. It will be snowing." Marique objected. "Let's start off in Goa, like we planned, and get used to the rhythm of India. When the weather warms up in the north, then we can go to Dharamsala."
* * * * *
The next day, Marique went to work armed with a letter of resignation. Maya on the other hand, went shopping. Marique had told her exactly which shops to visit. They were all like the church jumble sales at home. Strange mixtures of the new and the used and the eccentric, hidden amongst piles of useless junk.
Marique's first rule for tropical travel was absolutely no 100% cotton. Blends of cotton were best. Cotton polyester, or even cotton Lycra. Heavy 100% cotton was only recommended if you could carry appliances such as washers and dryers and irons with you. In the tropics 100% cotton never fully dried, and therefore got grubby and rotted.
Sun dresses she already had, sarongs and saris she would buy there. Marique had shown her some of the slim thin leggings which were the Indian equivalent of tights. Those she could buy in Goa.
What she was looking for were shirts and skirts that would look smart and western when they were traveling on planes, boats, trains and buses. In India it was an advantage to look like you were staying at an expensive hotel. Mostly, she was looking for skirts with belt loops, so that she could wear a hollow belt with money rolled into it, and hang a hidden passport pouch from it, and down her tights..
She was also looking for a light weight nylon wind breaker to take instead of her bulky trench coat. She also needed a sun hat that could survive a crushing and still keep its shape. One that had a scarf instead of a hat string. A scarf that could be tied one way to keep the hat on in a wind, and tied another way to protect the face from dust or from men's eyes.
She had been warned to get sandals that would not be ruined if they got wet, and that had back straps and low heels. She bought some cross trainer runners a size bigger than the ones she already had, because Marique had told her that her feet would swell in the tropics, and at high altitudes. She knew it was silly, or simply vanity, but usually she bought shoes a bit on the small size and put up with the cramping.
Of course, the trouble was not just finding these items, but finding ones that fit, and were stylish. Her find of the day was an old lightweight plastic Samsonite suitcase that someone had bolted straps to and therefore had turned it into a hard sided pack.
She met Marique for lunch and they went together to her bank and bought traveler's cheques. Bank cards and bank machines were all you needed in Europe, but in India they were so unreliable that you needed traveler's cheques as well.
That night, the father spent half the night in his workshop turning one of their old hard-sided suitcases into a suitcase pack like Maya had bought. Meanwhile, Maya gave another treatment to his wife. This time there was no coughing, or at least, not so much. Luckily, there was still lots of brandy being passed around.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - the Ashram by Skye Smith
Chapter 8 - To Mumbai (Bombay), India
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea. - Mahatma Gandhi.
On her next day off, Marique took Maya to Brussels on the train to apply for their Indian visas. The trip to India was starting to feel real. They were getting very excited. Brussels was very expensive, so they didn't do much except to walk around. It was filled with politicians in expensive suits from all over Europe. Maya kept her gloves on the whole time.
They were now close enough to the day of departure to be creating piles of things that they were thinking of taking to India. They had a growing problem with keeping the weight of their pack-cases down. To this end they decided not to take any warm clothing or blankets. They would buy them if they had the need, and sell them or give them away when the need disappeared. Money was a lot lighter than warm clothing.
They saved a lot of weight on toiletries by reducing hair products to just concentrated leave-in-conditioner, the kind surfer chicks used. You needed only a dab after each wash and it meant that they could buy and use the local shampoo. At the last minute, they loaded up on bottles of hand sanitizer because Marique couldn't remember if she had been able to buy it in India. Even the Internet couldn't answer that question.
When the big day finally arrived, Maya checked her Blackberry one more time for messages. She was expecting an email from her guys in Vancouver, but there was nothing since the original email response from Karl saying how he envied her.
Marique's father drove them to the airport. They looked more like two young women flying off to join a cruise boat, than off to find a full moon party on a backpacker beach. Maya had been assured by the studio that her Blackberry would work in India, and now she assured the father that they would send him regular emails.
Once the plane was in the air, suddenly everything became very real. Maya was in a kind of panic-slash-shock. She had not yet gotten her mind around being in an ancient town in Europe, and here she was off to India.
"Don't worry," said Marique with the air of someone who had done this all before, "we arrive well before dark. I never leave a big city airport in the dark unless I have someplace to go because airports are designed to keep tourists safe. This time we arrive before dark, we take the shuttle to the downtown YWCA and get a room, and the next morning we see about train reservations to Goa."
"The YWCA? In India? Are you kidding me?" Maya laughed. She opened one of the tiny bottles of brandy and took a swig to hold off the airplane diseases. She passed it to Marique.
"Hey, we are two tourist women traveling in India." Marique shrugged. "They won't turn us away. They have plain but clean rooms for cheap. More important, they will make sure we are absolutely safe from 'ustlers."
"Hustlers?"
"Yeah, like I keep saying. I 'ave a love 'ate relationship with India. 'ustlers are one of the 'ates. One of the all-the-time 'ates. Never trust free information in India. It is always suspect."
The airline they were flying with was based in India and had Indian stewardesses. Maya was fascinated watching them work, or rather, not work. She mentioned it to Marique who laughed. "Being a stewardess is a glamorous job for an Indian woman. The women that become stewardesses are therefore from good families. In India, good families have lots of servants. These women 'ave been waited on 'and and foot since they were babies. Now they are expected to wait on us."
"So, what is wrong with us?" Maya asked.
"We are casteless. We are one step above untouchables. We should be serving them, not they serving us. It ees one of those India things."
Now it made sense when the first meal was literally thrown in front of them, and afterwards, how they were ignored for the rest of the flight.
After landing at Mumbai airport, they were taken by articulated buses from the plane to the Arrivals area. It was their first taste of the hot, airless crush of people that must be taken for granted in India. In the arrivals area there were a thousand people lined up waiting to go through immigration processing.
Marique grabbed Maya by the arm and propelled her to the first woman immigration officer she saw. "Excuse me," she said in a very English accent, "is it all right if we stand out of queue?"
The older woman looked at them kindly and said in a lovely sing-song voice, "Why of course you may. Go and stand behind those women over there. You will be called forward when it is your turn."
"What is out of queue?" asked Maya.
"In India you queue for everything," replied Marique. "There are lots of queue jumpers, and lots of men with body odor and wandering hands. Women are allowed to wait over to the side away from the madness of the queue. The officials expect it, and wave to you when they think it is your turn. You watch. Those officers will now compete to be the ones to talk to us."
; She was right. They were interviewed ahead of a hundred people who had been there before them. A nice young Indian man smiled endlessly at them and stamped their visa, and welcomed them. They were gracious enough to smile back and wave goodbye.
Next was the half-hour wait for their luggage to show up. Marique told her to use the toilets now, because they were always pretty clean in the secure areas. Feeling lighter and cleaner, they went back to watching for their suitcases. The shoulder harnesses of the suitcases were detachable, so they had unclipped them at Brussels airport and had stuffed them inside the cases. In otherwords, their packs had become suitcases again.
Marique had told her all sorts of horror stories about soft-sided luggage having their zippers sprung so people could reach in with their hands. With these rigid and unbreakable plastic Samsonites, that wasn't going to happen.
Finally they spotted their luggage. They had come down the wrong conveyor. They loaded them onto a trolley that had one broken wheel and one squeaky wheel, and proceeded towards the customs check. They showed their color coded cards from immigration, and didn't even have to open their bags. They just walked right by everyone and out of the reasonably sane and air-conditioned part of the airport.
As soon as they stepped through the automated sliding doors they were hit by hot damp air filled with the smell of diesel exhaust and the sounds of the general madness of the greeting area of the airport.
"Right," said Maya looking at the crowd of men hustling and hassling every traveler with offers of the absolutely best rates on everything from rooms, to rides, to rupies. "Now what?"
"First to the bank to get some rupees, and then we negotiate for a taxi to the YWCA." said Marique looking a bit apprehensive as she was hailed from all sides by all sorts of men. The last time she had done this, she had been with her six foot Adonis of a Canadian boyfriend.
Maya hated airports. She pulled her suitcase off the trolley and balanced it on its wheels and followed Marique along a corridor formed by a half-high wall of tempered glass that kept the hustlers from mobbing the doorway. A tall thin Indian man was trying to keep up with her by pushing his way through the families who leaning over the wall watching for their relatives from the planes.