My Dream to Be Free

by Juergen Stollin

  I had to react, which I did, by inviting them to the pool bar and I bought them a drink. But they ordered only Cola, which surprised me very much because I had seen that they also had something alcoholic at the poolside.

  Perhaps the vodka was to blame, that I told the most audacious girl, but who giggled the loudest, that she was still very childish and far from mature. Then she replied that I should try again how grown up she was!

  I did not understand at once, but she explained it to me. Her friends would have to go now, since she would be picked up by a driver. But she was came from Arunachal Pradesh and had a room here in Delhi. She invited me to visit her place. She asked me mockingly and cheekily whether I was mature enough for that.

  Now I understood what she meant and was a bit more cautious. I did not want to rush into a new adventure, which could cost me my job.

  I had considered her to be very young and told her so.

  But she countered and said that she looked like 16 but was twenty-three years old. I could see that in the file for personnel in the hotel.

  Mimung from Arunachal Pradesh

  I doubted whether or not to do this but the leprechaun on my left shoulder convinced me that I should go along with her to her apartment.

  This inner pig-dog - when he comes out and sits on my shoulder, I can’t decide anything for myself anymore because he calls the shots.

  I simply cannot defend myself or I don't want to defend myself.

  So we took a taxi up to her apartment, which was located in a skyscraper. Using the elevator, we arrived at the 12th floor. The house was very modern, as well as the two-room apartment. When she had spoken of a room, then she was right, because she lived with a girlfriend from her homeland together in this apartment. But that girlfriend was not in the city for a few days. My student's name was Miming, I knew that from the hotel. But I didn't know what I was doing here.

  Nevertheless, I stayed because I was curious.

  Thus gradually the greed became another kind of greed. I felt like a detected thief. A thief who had stolen something meaningless but who would not escape punishment.

  These young innocent young girls!

  There you are with inhibitions and feelings of guilt, and yet they are such sly old dogs! We talked about everything. She took a bottle of whiskey and soda from her room, placed both on the small side table and went again to get ice and glasses. It was so nice to listen to her Indian-English singsong voice. I was wrong!

  She actually wanted to just chat and get to know me closer. That was fine with me. So I didn't have anything to reproach myself for, later! I did not take any initiative, neither did she as well. The living room was furnished almost in European style. Nothing was missing. There was a huge TV, but we did not switch it on. We listened to English music from a radio with super good speakers. The whiskeys dissembled her voice a bit. She began to speak more in the so typical Indian English.

  Suddenly she slid off the couch and pulled me on the carpet. I was not sure if this should be a prior examination or if that was the initiation and invitation to more.

  It was a point, where all doubts were gone and I only saw a beautiful, willing woman next to me on the carpet.

  Her jet-black, shiny hair smelled slightly of coconut. Her brown skin, which now came to light when I took off her jeans and the scent of Opium perfume, which I breathed, turned me on in such a way that there was no turning back. I had seen the brown vial of Opium perfume, when I was in the bathroom. Now I smelled it close to her skin. Her deep black eyes sparkled like thousand light bulbs. Her body's heat and her slender fingers running now under my shirt and my belly back and forth, made me weak. But something else became strong, which she felt and focused on now! Now my reluctance so far became irrelevant and I became active.

  I had never undressed a woman so quickly. Also, I had never quickly shed my clothes so quickly.

  We both lay naked on the carpet and I could see what a beautiful body Mimung had. She trembled slightly all over and said that I should be very careful because she had never slept with a man.

  My brain was probably in my cock because I did not hear her soft weeping. No tears out of fear or pain: it was a cry of joy, bliss, which gave me courage to penetrate into her. I did it with a lot of feeling and when she asked me to stop, I did. We lay quietly side by side, looked us in the eye and understood one another. She asked me to stay there till the morning.

  She did not have to beg me, I was happy about it. We told one another how wonderful life was and other stories till we fell asleep next to one another. In the morning we drove together to our hotel. But I got out somewhat earlier, so that no one saw us together. It would not be good. I should not have such an intimate contact with my students.

  We did not betray each another in the kitchen or even in the class room.

  I was once again with a woman, this time a young Indian girl, who had become my slave and who agreed that we met almost daily.

  She wanted me to move in with her in her apartment but I could talk her out of that quickly, since her friend would come back. The fact that she had been a virgin until recently and had learned everything so quickly as to what turned a man on and that she also came taking her own risks, almost seemed like a miracle!

  I asked her if she had been in Khajuraho and had studied the figures at the temple or the Kamasutra. Mimung thought she had a natural talent. I was satisfied with that.

  For a long time we were floating on rose-colored clouds even when the girlfriend came back, we did not have any inhibitions to see one another daily and making love. Her girlfriend was a good one and promised not to say anything to Mimung's parents.

  This was because the parents of these two girlfriends were friends. But at some point you fall from the sky to the ground and into harsh reality!

  The higher you float, the deeper you fall - that's just the way it is. The human being has two major drives: one is self-preservation, the other is the drive to preserve the species. I had lived the drive to preserve the species with Mimung to the full. Now I had the instinct for self-preservation, which was now inevitable, and that was my job. You have to work to feed and clothe yourself and to be able to buy many beautiful things just to preserve yourself. My work contract was meant only for this period of the course. It was just a test run, which was implemented by the private sector. And they told me that they wanted to continue but had to first negotiate with the ministry about who would bear the costs. It shouldn’t be possible just for the rich to pay for this but it was to be possible also for those of the lower class. However, it could take a long time till a decision came.

  Not only my students had learned something, even I had become a master of the Indian cuisine.

  My students got a real diploma but I had to content myself with a certificate from the hotel.

  I was without a job again and that meant no income.

  My debt from the New York trip at the embassy were settled and I was pleased about it. As long as I still had money for a ticket, I would had to hand in my resignation and leave Delhi. That meant I had to also leave Mimung! But I could not do that, I was totally in love with this woman!

  We had bonded together so strongly that a separation did not come into question. Also Mimung would be shattered; she said that to me every day.

  She was pressurized from home asking why she was still in Delhi and was not coming back. Both of us had to go back to our families but we did exactly the opposite.

  I couldn’t leave this woman. She was unlike Chitra. It would be too easy to see just a woman in her. It was not the woman, it was her nature that made a difference, her honesty, her openness, the innocence, which she still had and also the respect she showed to others. She was not spoiled yet, because I could discern and see a good person in her.

  I adored her and called her my Maharani, which caused her in turn to call me as “Herr Hans". She thought that the "Herr" was something very special in our country.

  Our age difference was not
a problem for her. It came out of the question for me to take her to Germany. She was just 23 and I was already 35. The difference was too big for me.

  But it is precisely this purity, this innocence, this simplicity that made her so attractive to me.

  Lilian had been the European counterpart, which was represented by Mimung in Asia.

  The still unspoilt ones, until they met me.

  That should be a joke.

  Mimung often told me that I should come with her to Arunachal Pradesh. We both could run her father's hotel there. It was nothing great, but there was still so much of potential for growth in that whole area. It was not only the hotel, the whole region was just about to be discovered by tourists according to her. She would inherit the hotel later anyway since she did not have any brothers, only a younger sister.

  I started getting interested in this Indian State at the end of the Himalayas and at the border to China. I had never heard of it except from Mimung and her friend. I knew it from the old maps, where this region was called as the "Northeast Frontier Agency". For Indian conditions, it was a small state. Nevertheless, it was about 85,000 km² with 470,000 inhabitants. There were 20 major tribal people and 100 sub-tribes. They drank "Apong", a local, non-alcoholic beverage. That would probably not hurt me.

  "Apong" was drunk from birth to death for everyone, always and everywhere.

  It was said to be a fantastic substance for the immune system. Throughout the region, no one had cancer because this drink choked the pathogen in its core. So they said.

  There were also 700 schools for our offspring, Mimung said. She already thought of our offspring, whereas I was not even sure if I wanted to have children with her. But no woman had asked me so far if I wanted to have children with her.

  She was the first one to make such a comment. Mimung also told me what the name of their state "Arunachal" meant: Land of the rising sun.

  And besides, they also said that the sunset kissed the mountains. "Our country is twice the size of Switzerland and with 70% forest area, it is at least as beautiful or even more beautiful. This part of India was still so natural because the English had kept this region so isolated because of the border to China.

  It had always been an important border area. Even the Chinese wanted to merge it in the year 1962.

  After five weeks of war it was all over, but due to this reason this piece of land received such an important role in India.

  To date, you need a special permit, if you want to travel to this area and if you are not from here.

  But Mimung knew I would get a special permit because I knew her and would marry her.

  Again this allusion to getting married!

  I did not like her suddenly hustling me at all. First a Ceylonese woman and now an Indian woman. I did not want to marry. Besides, I was still married, at least on paper, which lay dormant somewhere in a dusty filing cabinet in Berlin.

  Mimung did not stop raving, probably to make me like her home-state. The Himalayan Mountains are after all at an altitude of 4000-7000 meters here. In the west, the mountains border on Bhutan and in the south, to the plateau of Assam.

  Only in winter it was a bit cold, otherwise the winter temperatures were around zero and in summer it became warm up to 38 degrees. Her home was in Itanagar, the capital.

  We would then stay in a hotel. Itanagar was of course somewhat modern in Indian terms - but of course not for a German, Mimung told me.

  She imagined that she could boost tourism, where everything was still so virginal. We would be the first ones, who would offer trekking tours or big game safaris or simply hunting safaris! There were wild elephants, tigers, leopards, musk ox, deer and wild boar in large packs. Of course, monkeys, the gibbons. There were the rarest flowers and plants there. The waterfalls of Akash Ganga or Tawang were at 2000 to 3300 meters. All what you could do were there! There was even an Ayurvedic hospital here already! And very quickly we would have the largest hotel in Itanagar. She did not understand why I still pondered and began to question my love for her. She started pestering me once again!

  Who knew that India reaches further behind East Pakistan, that is behind Bangladesh? And should I go and live there? Between Bangladesh, Burma - i.e. Miramar, China, Bhutan and Nepal - Mimung wanted to drag me across there?

  Nobody would certainly look for me nor find me any more definitely for a long time.

  Impossible - I could bury myself under the earth right here!

  If I carried out some big crime, I could hide myself there and no one would find me.

  Since her father was not only a hotel owner but also was into politics in the regional government and had a ministerial post (I think Mimung even said Interior Minister), I would certainly have no problems getting a permit.

  But even if I was to be rewarded with the most beautiful woman and a hotel, I could not live at the end of the world.

  I did not want to shock Mimung too much, so I made her to understand that I would think about how we could tackle all this as best as possible. I told her to give me some time.

  I did not need to lie and tell her any tales to explain that I did not want it at all. Since a messenger had come from her family, who was to take her back to Itanagar, she had an escort and could not stay any longer in Delhi, she had to fly back.

  It was all too much for Mimung.

  She wanted me came along with her immediately and meet her family.

  I suggested to her that she should first talk to her family about me and then I couls still come later or she could come and fetch me, which she accepted, thank God.

  Finally I was able to persuade her to be a loving daughter and to fly without me to her parents. Somehow I was relieved but also very sad that she was gone. Not even 24 hours had passed and I already had such a longing for her that I almost would have found my way to Itanagar.

  I had already had so many goodbyes and separations so I would survive this separation.

  That reminds me of a wise saying of Confucius (551-479 BC): ‘They must often change, who would be constant in happiness!’

  Maybe I changed too often, which probably dispelled my happiness.

  Delhi was very bleak without Mimung, I had my new accommodations again in a smaller hotel.

  I hoped that “Leg”, that is Heinz, would be back from Belgium. But I could not find him in any hotel. Because of Mimung and my work in the hotel, I had totally forgotten "Leg". Perhaps he had stayed back in Belgium?

  By chance I met an old friend, whom I only met now and then in the past few years. He belonged to a Hare Krishna movement and came to Delhi only occasionally. Most of the time he was in his ashram in Poona. He called himself Ranja. I knew that his name was Bill and that he was an American. I also knew he was very deeply involved in drug trafficking.

  His 250cc Mercedes, with the green Iranian customs number and the red numbers 12345, i.e. a series that could not be ignored. I sat opposite this American in his orange clothes now and he told me that he knew “Leg”. But he knew him only by the name of Heinz, but how many one-legged Germans with the name Heinz were there in Delhi?

  I was told he was at the Interconti Hotel, and that he was doing very good, since he had just come back a few days ago from Australia. Heinz had met him in Bombay and had convinced him that he should make a trip to Sydney.

  Of course I visited “Leg” and we had to tell each other a lot.

  The madman had taken a suitcase with 20 kilos of hashish to Australia.

  Heinz told me that he had been very lucky. He had been given a suitcase with his things and an unprepared suitcase with this huge amount of hashish!

  At the last minute he wanted to back out; in his opinion, it was too much and the risk was too high. But then the devil rode him and he thought that it didn't matter how much he would have when he got caught.

  He met a fellow traveler in the plane, with whom he had got along with very well and of course “Leg” had told him his story of being an officer and about saving the Jews as wel
l as about how he had lost his leg.

  This man was an influential well-known citizen from Sydney. He made sure that a wheel chair was made available for “Leg” on arrival.

  They had got his luggage to be picked up together with the Australian's. Of course it went unchecked as VIP luggage directly into the vehicle of new acquaintance, whose driver also drove “Leg” up to a good hotel.

  “Leg" had opened the suitcase in the hotel.

  First he saw some cockroaches and only then he saw this huge amount of hashish, wrapped only in plastic bags and towels, nothing more than pressed sheets of this stuff.

  We did not want to think of what could have happened if he had undergone a check.

  "Leg” had been able to sell the gems from Sri Lanka and gave me my share. Now I too was in a somewhat better mental condition.

  You simply feel better with money. They always say that money cannot buy you happiness. But that may apply for people, who always have some money. But I say that you can buy a lot of things for money that make you happy!

  Heinz was glad that he had been lucky and was able to enjoy this luck. I didn't want to have anything to do with that kind of happiness.

  Since I met a Dane, who took me to Katmandu and showed me a new way of making money, "Leg" and I parted ways. The new business was respectable, I correct myself - almost respectable. It was to do with silk shirts, sewn by Nepalese women in handcrafted processes and was marked with a label of a reputable company. The label was imported from Thailand. It was a plagiarism.

  But the silk shirts were genuine. The cost factor of the silk material and the tailoring came up to about ten dollars and in Europe we got easily up to ninety dollars per piece.

  The shirts did not weigh much, so the freight costs incurred were not much.

  There was no export duty and there was no import duty in Europe because the goods were from a developing country and were fully handmade.