Brian on the Brahmaputra

by David Fletcher

  Brian was suffering from a little bout of anthropomorphism, which probably meant he was hungry. It was just as well that the party was now retracing its steps and returning to the rest house for some breakfast.

  This was quite a production. Another bus had arrived while they’d been away, and this had brought from the boat its catering staff and all the comestibles needed for a hearty, late-morning feed. A crescent of chairs had been arranged in front of the rest house and food preparation was already underway in a well-equipped field kitchen. Brian was impressed, as was everybody else. And despite the growing heat of the day there was no shortage of customers for the fry-ups on offer.

  Brian served himself with some bacon and fried bread and then queued for his egg choice.

  ‘One egg, please. Fried both sides.’

  He accompanied this request with the internationally recognised hand signal for the “both-sides” treatment of the single egg, and observed immediately that in India, “one egg” means “two”. It had happened in Kolkata on their first morning in the country. There he had made an identical request, and as now, he had ended up with double his requirements. He knew he mumbled a bit, but he had pronounced his order with the clarity of a seasoned newsreader (as one tended to do in foreign parts) and he could only conclude that this duplication approach was a standard part of Indian egg cuisine. Presumably if one asked for two eggs, one would get four, and so on. Or was it just eggs? If a wife expressed a desire for two children in India was that taken by her husband as four? A sort of pleasing generosity of spirit that had now got out of hand. Well, there were an awful lot of children everywhere…

  Brian chided himself. That was a terrible thought not worthy of a true Nature-seeker. All they were doing was trying to feed him properly, and here he was being mean and spiteful. He felt properly ashamed. So much so that he didn’t enjoy his breakfast. He ate it but he felt guilty and a little miserable, his mood picking up only at its conclusion when he discovered on his ankle an enormously engorged leech. It had clearly found no trouble at all in reaching his blood supply through two layers of socks as he’d been sitting there eating his eggs. Something had moved in mysterious ways and the world had been put to rights. Through the agency of a small sucking animal, justice had been delivered swiftly and proportionately. He picked the leech off his ankle, laid it carefully on the grass and smiled. Sandra said she thought he was mad.

  She also said that she thought he should now wear his hat. The sun was getting higher in the sky, the temperature was rocketing, and the party was now about to embark on a proper walk. This wouldn’t be just a pre-breakfast stroll, this would be a two to three hour hike, much of it along an old road through the sanctuary, where the sun was free to beat down on unprotected heads and beat down with intensity on heads without a good covering of fur on them. But Brian hated hats. And if he made use of all the shade – or of what shade there was…

  So nearly three hours later he’d seen some capped langur monkeys, any number of new birds, including a Jerdon’s baza and a pale-chinned flycatcher, passed a few words with other members of the party – and he was beginning to feel entirely exhausted. However, so were most of the others, and now they could re-board their buses and relax on the way home. Or they could have if all that manic traffic had disappeared. And Jorhat had been removed. And there wasn’t more of that fourth dimension nonsense. And if their bus’s horn had gone on the blink… Brian had been conscious of a more than enthusiastic use of the horn by the driver on the outward journey. But now, on the way back, he was conscious only of those rare interludes when it wasn’t being used.

  India’s traffic must be the noisiest in the world. Horns are used constantly to announce one’s presence to other road users. And with the roads packed full of road users, that means virtually all the time. If some other vehicle isn’t blaring a warning at you, you’re blaring a warning at it. And for all Brian knew, this constant use of horns was also an essential part of conjuring up all that fourth dimensional space out there.

  Eventually, however, the purgatory of the roads was over, and the two minibuses pulled up to the muddy bank of the Brahmaputra. To be precise, they pulled up to the muddy, south bank of the Brahmaputra. Which wasn’t ideal, as their mother boat, the MV Sukapha, was moored half a mile away on the north bank. There was therefore a final stage to the homeward journey: a short ride in the Sukapha’s “country boat”, a small enclosed tender that was used to ship its passengers from shore to ship and ship to shore whenever it was moored on the wrong side of the river – which, as it transpired, was always.

  This final leg of the journey took an age. First, twenty-three Nature-seekers, keen to spot that last new bird for the day, or to capture that last special image on their Nikon, had to be rounded up and kitted out with their garish orange life-jackets – of which more later. Then, when all were aboard, there was a further delay due to an impromptu performance of a pantomime on the bank of the river. A driver of a local minibus had been loading his vehicle onto a fat, black cargo boat – by driving it across two strategically placed gang-planks – when the strategy failed. His vehicle was now stranded on the planks, three wheels still on the planks – but one not. At the left front corner of the minibus it was not rubber resting on the woodwork but axle. And he was well and truly stuck.

  Clearly entertainment on this scale could not be ignored, and the Sukapha’s tender only pulled away when it became clear that the pantomime’s plot line had nowhere to go. The minibus was stuck and would probably remain stuck for the foreseeable future. So there was nothing more to see.

  Now, the trip across the river could have taken no more than fifteen minutes. But for Brian, this trans-river trip seemed to take as long as a Neil Kinnock speech. And this was because Brian had developed a big problem. Yes, an early start to the day, all those hours on the road, that double egg for breakfast and then a walk in the sun, had all conspired to generate for this particular Nature-seeker what could only be described as an urgent evacuational event situation. If he didn’t get to a lavatory very, very soon, there would be a very personal but very public disaster.

  It was a close run(s) thing, but he managed it. He made it to the privacy of his en-suite privy just in time, and there he relieved himself mightily. And this relief would have been unbounded if he hadn’t then realised that this was just the start. That his problem wasn’t merely a touch of the sun and too many eggs – but also something a little more bacterial. And that for the next twenty-four hours at least his closest friend would be the closet on which he was now sitting. Nature-seeking would have to go on hold for a while. He would have to stay on board the Sukapha – and close to this loo.

  For the third time today, he felt mildly ridiculous.

  2.

  Brian resorted to a diet of bananas. What it lacked in variety it more than made up for in its digestibility and its “intestinal integrity”. That is to say that the bananas, even when chewed, seemed to remain reasonably solid as they passed through his gut. And, at least, this allowed him to sleep through the night, without his having to make repeated visits to what he now regarded as his porcelain haven.

  The morning, however, was not so good. Even bananas, it seemed, had their limits. And on several occasions Brian was once again reduced to the pose of “The Thinker”, and Sandra, in the cabin outside the door, was forced to try not to listen. But there again, that’s what being married is all about, isn’t it? One party to the marriage coping with the unspeakable bodily functions of the other party – whilst at the same time trying not to display too much in the way of intrusive interest in their loved one’s discomfort. After all, it could be her turn next…

  There are, of course, also limits to this sort of intimacy, and eventually Sandra decided to leave him on his own – to conduct the next movement of his sufferings in splendid isolation and without an audience of even one. She had decided she would take herself to the sundeck, and there take in the splendour of the Brahmaputra and enjoy her own i
solation. Because all the other Nature-seekers had left the boat some time ago to visit a nearby temple and absorb some local culture, and she would thus have the sundeck to herself.

  So Brian was now on his own – in bed. Propped up against a couple of pillows, he was staring at the shape of his body beneath the bed-clothes and he was feeling sorry for himself in a way only a man could feel sorry. And why not? Hell, he’d spent all that money to get to Assam, and now he was here he was out of action. And not only had he got a full-blown bellyache, but he also had a pretty awful headache, and on top of that, an awful lingering taste of stale bananas in his mouth. It just wasn’t fair. Especially when everybody else was out there soaking up new experiences. Or just relaxing on the sundeck without even a hint of any ailments. Life was such a bitch…

  But no, this was being far too negative, even for Brian. If he was stuck here for now he should use the time as best he could. And to start with, why not take in the delights of the cabin? After all, it was a pretty nice cabin, and it even had an extra window. Yes, the Sukapha, on its upper deck, housed twelve cabins, six either side of a central corridor. But the end cabins, one of which was now in the possession of Brian and Sandra, had not just a window looking out of the side of the vessel, but another equally expansive window looking out of the stern of the vessel. This was a real treat, the sort of treat normally afforded to well-connected people or the members of quangos, and very rarely to the likes of Brian, who were normally grateful to get any sort of window at all – or even a reasonably large bed. And yes, that was OK as well. In fact, it was more than OK. It was easily large enough to accommodate Brian’s six-foot-two-ish frame, his appreciably smaller wife, his night-time excursions around the mattress, and now, even his emaciated husk of a body as it lay slumped like a cadaver…

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said out loud. ‘This isn’t good enough at all. I think it’s about time I had some air.’

  And with that, he eased himself out of bed and then he eased himself into the shower. This worked wonders, and within a quarter of an hour he was emerging onto the sundeck of the Sukapha and squinting along its length to locate the whereabouts of his temporarily estranged wife. It didn’t take him long. The sundeck was more or less the size of the whole boat, but it was fitted out with only enough sun-loungers and cane chairs to serve the needs of its two dozen passengers. Other than this furniture there was just a small wheelhouse, a small bar, a cabinet containing a selection of local handicrafts and three postcards and, at the far end of the deck (over the blunt end), a row of pots containing plants, most of which were either in the process of recuperation or in the process of expiring. It was difficult to tell which.

  He approached Sandra and announced his presence.

  ‘Hi. I’m up.’

  ‘Have you got the key? You haven’t locked it in the room, have you?’

  Brian blinked. He hadn’t quite prepared himself for the warmth of this greeting. And worse, he now couldn’t remember what he’d done with the key. He mumbled something even he didn’t understand, and as he mumbled he fumbled. Somewhere in one of his pockets he must have the key.

  He did. He withdrew it with a dramatic flourish and presented it to his wife.

  ‘Amazing,’ she observed, as she took it from his hand. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have left it…’

  She was sitting in one of the cane chairs with a book in her lap and now a smile on her face. And there was real concern there as well.

  ‘And I suppose I should ask how you are. And how your stomach is.’

  ‘Well, I’m feeling much better, thanks. And I think my stomach is as well. At least, I haven’t heard from it for a while. And that can’t be bad.’

  ‘Good. And what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Nothing. And I hope my stomach has the same idea. And then, who knows? I might even have some lunch.’

  Sandra regarded her husband with a look that suggested she might be considering the effect on his bowels of a new delivery of Indian fuel. But all she said was: ‘Well, don’t sit in the sun’.

  He didn’t. He sat in another cane chair in the shade of the sundeck awning – and he thought about getting entirely well again – and about what was still in store…

  He and Sandra had booked this trip as soon as they had seen it advertised. Assam was essentially a tourist-free zone, and was only now being opened up at all following the easing of the separatist problems that had plagued this remote part of India for years. Furthermore, as well as an absence of tourists there was an abundance of wildlife in this area, and many species of animals and birds that Sandra and he would never have seen before. And to clinch it, they would be able to visit this area with a group of like-minded people and with some more than competent guides – and on a boat!Yes, rather than slogging around from lodge to lodge and camp to camp (as they’d done in many other “challenging” parts of the world) they would be able to glide down the mighty Brahmaputra on what was nothing less than a floating hotel. No unpacking bags every night, no repacking rinsed-out knickers before they were even dry, and no checking that you’d not left anything behind – worrying constantly that the tickets and the passports were no longer there.

  They didn’t normally travel in a group, and only twice before had they signed up as “Nature-seekers”. But this was different. And very appealing. And it even had an appealing extension. At the end of the Brahmaputra cruise, they, along with just eight others from the current group, would be going on to the Sundarbans for four nights. This was the area at the mouth of the Ganges to the south of Kolkata. Here there were mangrove forests, more animals, more birds – and again, no tourists. Just a handful of Nature-nutters like themselves. Bliss indeed.

  Well, so far it was shaping up fine. If, that is, one ignored the current case of the squitts, the local traffic and those bloody awful life-jackets. Other than those little wrinkles, everything had been as smooth as the lining on Brian’s gut. The flights out to India had all worked, the hotel in Kolkata where they’d spent their first night had been terrific – and the MV Sukapha was all they could have wished for.

  To look at, their current floating accommodation wasn’t quite as sleek as the sort of stuff Mr Abramovich goes in for. But there again it wasn’t built for the same purpose. It wasn’t constructed to impress air-heads, but instead it was put together to carry a small number of passengers in cosseted comfort down the broad and shallow waters of the Brahmaputra. To this end, it needed to be more a floating brick shape than anything more traditionally ship-shape and it hardly needed a pointy bit at the front end at all. The Sukapha, you see, didn’t cut its way through the water, it eased its way through – in the way a punt does – and with the same sort of draft as a punt. Only a very little of the Sukapha’s hull was hiding beneath the water-line.

  This submerged bit did, however, house a remarkable amount of activity. Small portholes just below the lower deck (the boat’s ground floor) were reminders to the cosseted passengers that below them were twenty or more crew, cooking, washing, ironing, oiling, tending – and living – and generally doing everything that was needed to keep the cosseting at the highest level possible. And they were all so smart and friendly…

  Above this working level was the lower deck of the Sukapha, which housed the passengers’ dining room – and a spa. Not like Cheltenham of course, but like one of those places where they rub things on you and rub things off you, and sometimes they do things with your feet. Brian even thought of using it (for about two minutes). But then the thought went away and it never came back.

  Then there was the upper deck, which housed all the cabins – and at its front end, the lounge. This was a lovely room. It had a bar in one corner and on the wall by the door there was a small library. This had nothing Russian in it and there were no football annuals. So not really ideal for Mr Abramovich. But it was full of books on flora and fauna and all things natural, the sort of reading material Nature-seekers have been known to digest in their sleep. The lounge also cont
ained some fine cane armchairs and settees, a little clutch of low, glass-topped cane tables, and at its very front, there was a pair of sliding doors opening out onto a forward-facing balcony. Here one could act out that famous scene from the film “Titanic” where two people, whose names Brian had never committed to memory, pose dramatically on the prow of the doomed ship. Only, on the Sukapha it was even better than in the film. The balcony was just above the lower deck, and any falling-over mishap would therefore result in only a broken limb and not in the loss of an entire life through drowning or instant hypothermia. Furthermore, there was very little possibility that any other passenger would be attempting to recreate the drama of that scene from “Titanic”, as most of them had far more sense. So you would have the stage to yourself, so to speak, and you could give it your all. And finally, unlike the Titanic, the Sukapha was not a doomed ship. So you could come back into the lounge whenever you liked and have a welcome drink from the bar, safe in the knowledge that the vessel you were currently on was not going to hit an iceberg.

  All these thoughts had passed through Brian’s head as he rested on the next deck up – which has already been described. This didn’t mean he was delirious, but it did mean he needed some interaction with other humans and he possibly needed some food. It was therefore very fortuitous that the Nature-seekers were now returning to the boat and that very soon lunch would be served.

  It was curry. Indeed, lunch was always curry. Just like dinner was always curry. This, after all, was India, and in India, people eat curry all the time. Here, it was not regarded as a treat or as an option or as a post-boozer fill-up, but simply as a diet, as a natural way to eat, and virtually the only way to eat. For Brian, this wasn’t a problem. He delighted in eating all sorts of curries, and the one on offer this lunch-time, laid out on the buffet table in the Sukapha’s dining room, looked particularly inviting. All the more galling then that he had to decline the invitation. Sandra and his own reluctant common sense told him to do so. And instead to have a… well, why not a banana?