Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  I stared into Gemma’s face, smiling at her with affection. Of course I’d never have told her, but I preferred her with her old, mousy hair and bulging tummy. I wanted her to stay just the same as always: my cuddly, constant bestest ever best friend. Whenever I returned home for the holidays and discovered yet another attempt at self-transformation—her hair color changed again, or some new health food fad—I always felt secretly irked. It’s childish, I know, but it made me feel left out.

  “You know what?” I said. “I think we should work out our route.”

  I stood up, stretching and clicking my knuckles.

  “Give us that book.”

  Gemma pulled the Lonely Planet from her bag and started to flick through it.

  “I was reading about Goa and Kerala on the plane,” she said. “They sound amazing.”

  “No, look. Let’s do it this way. Let’s ask the gods.”

  I had planned it all, long before the trip included Gemma. I would travel according to chance, a real adventurer, journeying to wherever fate decreed.

  “Whatever page it lands on, we’ll go there first.”

  I looked across the room at her uncertain face.

  “Go on, it’ll be much more of a laugh.”

  Plucking the guide from her fingers, I stood ceremoniously in the middle of the room, then tossed it high above my head. It flew upward through the fan-stirred air, its pages fluttering wildly as a myriad of possibilities flicked past. At the zenith of its flight it paused. Then suddenly it came crashing down onto the bare stone floor, our fate decided.

  I could have stopped it, of course I could. I could have caught the book, turned the pages with my own hands, and changed it all. But innocent of everything that was to come, I let it fall.

  The book landed at Gemma’s feet; its pages splayed and bent back like the wings of a squashed beetle.

  “Go on then. Pick it up and see.”

  She picked it up and laid it on her lap. For a moment she was silent, her forehead furrowed in concentration as I hopped at her side.

  “So what does it say?”

  She sighed and turned the page, still unwilling to comment.

  “Where is it?”

  “This is really interesting . . .”

  “Come on, Gem! Give it here!”

  “No, wait. I’m going to read it out to you. Ready?”

  I nodded impatiently.

  “Okay, here we go . . . Agun Mazir, Orissa. ‘This little visited town situated in the heart of the forests of eastern Orissa is best known as the site of the shrine of Pir Saheb Nirulla, a Sufi mystic who is said to have burnt to death there in 1947 . . . ’ ”

  She broke off and studied the book.

  “ ‘The town has been a centre of pilgrimage for the last forty years . . . ’ God, this is really weird . . .”

  “What does it say?”

  “This guy, this Pir Saheb blokey . . . he burst into flames when he was meditating or praying or something, and now all these pilgrims come to the shrine thinking it’s going to heal them or get them a job or whatever . . .”

  I’d had enough of listening. I leaned over and plucked the book from her hands.

  “What do you mean, he burst into flames?”

  “It was a miracle. Look, read that bit at the bottom. He was a hermit, living in the jungle, and he spontaneously combusted . . .”

  “ ‘The truth behind the myth,’ ” I read out, “ ‘is hotly contested by local historians . . . while devotees to the shrine insist in the miraculous nature of Pir Saheb Nirulla’s combustion, others have a more prosaic and grim explanation, citing the partition of India and violence between Hindus and Muslims as the real cause of his burning.’ ”

  Gemma blinked at me.

  “Blimey.”

  “Anyway, that’s where we’re going. It sounds wild.”

  There was a pause. From the look in Gemma’s eyes, I thought she was about to demur.

  “Is there anywhere to stay?” she said quietly.

  “Let’s see . . .” I scanned the book hastily for information.

  “ ‘The town has only one hotel, catering solely for devotees who travel from all over India to visit the shrine. . . . There is also a tourist bungalow, which is reached by a path leading into the forest to the north. Cost . . . forty rupees . . . single, air-conditioning . . . ’ blah, blah . . . sounds fine. Let’s do it.”

  I put the book down and stood up. I guess I should have told Gemma about this part of the trip before we left Stevenage, but somehow, in all the rush to get our visas and jabs and everything packed, I’d forgotten. Glancing at her face I sensed that she was still not wholly persuaded.

  “How do you get there?”

  “Train to Calcutta, then another train to Orissa, then bus it. Go on, Gem. It’ll be really fun. It sounds like it’s totally off the beaten track and we don’t just want to go to all the usual predictable places, do we? We can do Goa afterward.”

  I glanced at her doubtful face. It was so much part of my fantasy that I hadn’t even considered she might want to do things differently.

  “We don’t have to always ask the book,” I said patiently. “But since we did I think we should go where it says. Perhaps there’s a reason why it opened there.”

  “A reason?”

  “Yeah, you know. Fate.”

  She stared at me. She looked hot and unhappy, an expression she often assumed at clubs and parties when she was supposed to be having fun. I would spot her sometimes, dancing halfheartedly on the other side of the room, and just for a moment, when she thought no one was watching, she’d stare down at her feet, her mouth drooping as if she were close to tears. Now she paused, as if making up her mind. Then pushing her hair out of her eyes, she shook her head and laughed.

  “You win. Let’s go for it.”

  LATER that night we climbed the hotel’s wide stone stairway to the top floor, and following the sound of laughter and a guitar opened a fire door to the roof. The view was stunning. From the eighth floor we could see across Connaught Place to the wide thoroughfare of Janpath, its steady traffic melted to a single, molten line of light. Beyond this was a sparkling mass of streets and houses, interspersed by sudden patches of blackness—the bustees where the electricity did not reach. Above us the violet sky was encrusted with a million stars.

  “Wow!”

  I took a deep breath of the warm night air, and stepped through the door. The roof was scattered with sleeping bags. Immediately opposite the door a small group of travelers were sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the building as they talked and smoked. A little further on a young Western guy with a shaved head and a lunghi was playing the guitar. The air smelled of coconut oil and marijuana.

  As the door opened a couple of heads turned. I smiled ingratiatingly as if gatecrashing a private party. I was hoping no one would guess how recently we had arrived.

  “Looks like you were right about the budget rooms,” Gemma muttered. “The place is crammed with crusties.”

  “Sshh! They’ll hear.”

  We made our way to the other side of the roof and sat on the edge, peering down at the street below. The vendors and beggars had gone now, the pavement covered by the dark shapes of sleeping bodies. Despite Gemma’s remarks, my entire being pulsed with excitement. This was exactly what I wanted: the romantic hippie squalor of a flophouse roof under an Indian sky.

  “Isn’t it amazing? I can’t believe we’re actually here.”

  I sighed ecstatically. Pulling a face, Gemma produced two cigarettes and a packet of matches from her shirt pocket.

  “I need a fag.”

  “Where did you get the matches?”

  “Someone left them on the ledge.”

  She took out a match and struck it against the side of the box. It flared brilliantly for a brief second then went out. When she struck a second the sizzling head flew off the end of the match and into my lap.

  “Ow!”

  Finally she produced a fla
me, lit both cigarettes, and passed one to me, our own little ritual.

  “Bugger me, it’s hot,” she said, leaning back on her elbows.

  “What did you expect, Blackpool?”

  “Sarky.”

  She pinched my arm affectionately.

  “You know something?” I said. “This is what I’ve dreamed about doing for years.”

  “What? Sitting in the dust and listening to a bunch of hippies croon Bob Dylan?”

  “Nah. You know—this.” I gestured at the scene below. I suddenly really wanted her to understand, to share my enthusiasm. “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t even look down, just sniffed and said, “Hmph.” She’s just scared of it, I told myself; she’s not used to this kind of scene, she finds it intimidating.

  “Gem,” I said gently, laying my hand on her arm. “We’re going to have a real ball here.”

  She nodded, looking into my eyes and smiling.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. Just so long as you don’t start singing ‘Blowing in the Wind’ at me.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  We sat for a while in companionable silence, smoking and looking up at the sky.

  “So what do you think Steve would think of it?” Gemma suddenly said. “You know, I’m already really missing him.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. Steve’s views on India, or indeed anything else, were not something I wished to discuss. To deflect her attention I turned and stared into her face, raising my eyebrows meaningfully.

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “What?”

  “Your roof at home . . .”

  “Oh Christ!”

  Gemma clamped her hand over her mouth in mock horror. For a moment we stared at each other, then, at exactly the same time, we started to laugh.

  It was the summer before secondary school, just before Gemma’s dad left and she moved with her brother and mum into the semi in Stevenage. We were still little girls: our chests flat and our skin smooth, but something within us had started to stir. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know about sex; we did, in graphic detail—Gemma’s brother’s subscription to Fiesta had taken care of that. No, it was more that we’d never connected this embarrassing, exciting, and slightly nasty knowledge with ourselves. It was true that I’d experienced vague longings, a sense of desire I channeled into unfocused fantasies involving Roger Daltry, whose tight-trousered photo spreads adorned my sister’s room. I’d also enjoyed a long and arduous correspondence with a French schoolboy which stopped only when he arrived for the exchange program and I discovered that he was a foot smaller than me and picked his nose. In the spirit of adventurous competition Gemma had kissed a twelve-year-old boy who lived down her road, but all she reported back was that it had made her lips sore.

  So I guess it must have been to do with sex, in a warped, prepubescent way. It was certainly not something we would have dreamed of doing a year later. It involved us taking off our underwear—why, I’ve totally forgotten—and then climbing out onto the flat roof opposite Gemma’s parents’ bedroom. All summer we’d been using the roof as an urban tree house, a place to regroup and discuss strategy in the small war which had blown up with a group of local boys. Today, however, we pulled down our underwear, and leaving them tucked down the side of the radiator, climbed solemnly onto the roof. It was a hot day in August; even now I can remember the warmth of the asphalt on my bum as we sat on the edge, our legs overhanging the hot plastic drainpipe, pulling our skirts higher and higher over our thighs as we exposed ourselves to the elements.

  I was the first to do it. Still half sitting, I lifted my bottom and peed over the drain, just as a boy might. The golden liquid gushed down the pipe: wonderfully and intriguingly wicked, an effect heightened by the fear that Gemma’s father might suddenly appear at the window.

  After that first thrilling experimentation, peeing from the roof became a regular event. Later we moved onto more serious things: spliffs stolen from Gem’s brother; our virginity-losing competition when we were fifteen (Gemma won, but only because her mum was always at work so she had somewhere to do it); the thrills and spills of underage drinking. But for a while our shared peeing was our delicious secret. Now, over ten years later, we lay on our backs in the Indian night, staring up at the stars and laughing. After a while we were silent, watching our cigarettes glow red in the darkness and listening to the boy with the guitar. He had started to strum “Stairway to Heaven” now.

  Gemma raised her eyebrows at me.

  “I wish someone would take that bloody thing off him and break it over his head.”

  “Fascist.”

  “Well, it offends me!”

  I laughed. I was content with almost anything, but Gemma took her music very seriously, amassing a huge collection of records by bands I’d never heard of.

  “I mean, have we fallen into a naff seventies’ time warp here or what?”

  She sighed in exaggerated disgust. After a while she yawned and added sleepily: “I really think we should complain to the authorities.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  There was another long pause. When I next looked I saw that her eyes were closed, the cigarette dangling dangerously from her fingers. Leaning over her prone body, I pulled it gently away and stubbed it out on the side of the roof.

  “So then,” I said quietly. “Tomorrow Calcutta and then onward to Mr. Combustion. Okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was thinking. We ought to leave our traveler’s checks and important stuff locked up here. It says in the book you can do it at the railway station. Then we don’t have to worry about it getting stolen when we’re on the road.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Gem? Are you asleep again?”

  But this time there was no reply.

  3

  WHEN I opened my eyes the next morning Gemma was sitting up in bed reading.

  “What’s the time?”

  “It’s five A.M. at home, eleven in the morning here in sunny Delhi.”

  “Jesus! We’ve got so much to do!”

  Vaulting out of bed, I threw my clothes on and started to push my gear into my bag.

  “Money change, station, tickets. Then outta here.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “You don’t want to just stay put, do you? That bloke at Sussex who did India last year said we should get out of Delhi as soon as we could.”

  She shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.”

  We cashed £100 worth of traveler’s checks at the hostel and checked out, lugging our rucksacks back down the steps and along the sidewalk. It was nearly midday now, and far, far hotter than the evening before. Under the unforgiving glare of the sun, the grand arcades of Connaught Circus looked dirtier and more battered, a bit like Oxford Street in the Tropics. We gazed around, dazed by the heat. The sidewalks were filled with traders selling sugar-sweet posters of Vishnu and Michael Jackson, badly printed novellas for a hundred rupees, and cheap Balinese batiks. All around us people hurried past: businessmen in tight safari suits, glossy ladies in stiff saris and high heels, scruffy, skinny men in dhotis or shorts with tiffin tins on their heads; groups of wealthy, overweight teenagers in jeans and trainers. The circular road was crammed with traffic; the petrol fumes made us cough and cover our mouths with our hands.

  I stared avidly at the scene, soaking it all in. It was the pace of it that I liked the most: the frantic onslaught of vehicles from every direction; the honking of horns, and ringing of bells; the sheer velocity of people piled into cars and rickshaws. Goggling in amazement, I watched as four young men balanced precariously on the back of a single bicycle sailed past. “Hey baby!” they shouted. “What is your country?” Perhaps I should have given them a snooty stare, but I just waved and laughed. We were surrounded by raw pulsating energy, as if life was somehow closer to the surface than in the cold closed North, and it made me want to shout out loud with joy.

  “Let’s get a rickshaw.”

>   Putting one foot into the road, I flagged down one of the phuttering yellow and black scooter-rickshaws that shimmied past in the heat. As it veered sharply toward us Gemma gawped at me as if I was suggesting she ride to the station by unicycle.

  “You are joking?”

  “Why? It’ll be fun.”

  “Sure it’s fun, if fun involves being crushed alive by ten-ton trucks.”

  Ignoring her, I piled our bags inside. The driver flashed me a toothy smile. Like most rickshaw drivers in Delhi he was a Sikh, with a bright green turban, a silver bangle on his wrist, a resplendent beard, and reflector shades. His dashboard was decorated with tinsel and sparkling religious effigies; his fingernails were hennaed red.

  “Station, please!”

  He grinned, then still looking over his shoulder at us, did a U-turn in the middle of the road. Gemma screamed in horror; I instinctively closed my eyes, an elated rush of adrenaline pouring through my veins. For a terrifying second I could hear horns and angry curses and smell the petrol fumes of the traffic streaming around us. When I opened my eyes I saw that we had joined the far-side lane and with thousands of other vehicles were hurtling in the direction of the old city.

  As we neared the station the streets became progressively more narrow and crowded. Now we were competing with ox-drawn carts, dark, sweat-shiny men carrying piles of pots or bricks on their heads, scooters conveying whole families, and a marketful of vendors whose wares spilled from the broken sidewalks onto the streets. From time to time the rickshaw would lurch over a particularly deep pothole and then we’d bounce uncontrollably, our heads bumping the tarpaulin roof of the carriage. Perhaps it was not the most comfortable way to travel, but it felt like a fairground ride, and I adored it. The driver drove at breakneck speed, only slowing when the crush of traffic became impassable. Then, within seconds, thin—often tiny—hands would push their way inside the rickshaw, their palms outstretched for change.