by Frank Kusy
‘Oh man, come on. You really think he’d trash your place like he did Ivan’s landlord?’
‘I don’t think it. I know it.’
George gave a deep sigh. ‘You guys sound like an old married couple. Why don’t you get a trial separation or somethin’?’
I thought of Lou. Somehow, I didn’t think Spud did trial separations.
Safely back in Pushkar, I left George to recover in his room while I strolled into the market. Here I made three new friends. First there was Susie, a chirpy Cockney girl I found trying to decide between two pairs of socks. Then there was Nick and Anna, the friendly couple I bumped into at the Payal Guest House while I was trying to score some charas.
Nick was a blonde, blue-eyed Liverpudlian who had come to Pushkar to buy silk for his market stall in Vancouver, where Anna lived. The couple had first met at a rave party in London, and it was a match made in heaven. They could not have been more different—yet more alike. Nick was the quiet one, with a wild quiff of hair and a penchant for magic tricks. Anna was the chatty, smiley one, all sweet and innocent; a real child of nature. What bound them together was a love of travel, and of India in particular. Unlike me, they didn’t stay at big hotels or eat at fancy restaurants. They experienced India at a grassroots level. The more down and dirty it got, the more they seemed to like it. And they never spoke English when Hindi would do. Anna never asked, ‘One tea, please?’ when she could ask, ‘ek chai, milega?’ Nick carried round an ancient Hindi phrasebook containing useful instructions like ‘mind your own business’ and ‘catch that rat.’
I first met Nick on the roof of the Payal, playing with festooned devil sticks. We immediately hit it off.
‘You gotta read this book, Frank!’ he enthused. ‘It’s called Hindustani Without A Master, and it’s packed with hilarious phrases. I’ve been trying some of them out in the market, and the Indians have been totally gobsmacked!’
The phrases Nick had used to greatest effect were as follows:
There are many motor cars in Bombay
I ride him every morning
My horse is warm
I intend to go to Persia
This is my monkey
The lock of your musket is rusty
A sepoy has shot himself
I had four motions
He will be hanged at dawn
I discovered Anna down below, suffering from some sort of tummy bug. As a result, she had been hassled all day long by medicine men and charlatans offering her strange ‘cures’. The weirdest one, she said, was the guy who advised her to go out next Saturday afternoon at 3pm precisely, locate a black dog and pour mustard oil on its head.
That evening we all gathered at the Venus restaurant, just up from the Palace Hotel. The Venus was a new venue with the same rooftop set-up as every other hippy hangout in town, but with twinkling fairy lights on the ceiling and little balcony nooks where one could look down on the street below. I liked it because it had the best vegetarian dish in Pushkar: the ‘Venus Special Thali’. Nick liked it because it had the best and worst deals of any menu in India. The best deal, which allowed him to chill out all day without actually eating anything, was lemon tea at one rupee (two pence). The worst deal, which cost him a whole rupee extra, was ‘no ice’ at two rupees. Whenever his lemon tea evaporated and he was in danger of being ejected, he confused the waiter into going away by ordering ‘no ice.’
We all liked the Venus for its rapid rotation of crazy waiters. The first one, whom we encountered that night, was known simply as Penis. He came from somewhere near Mathura, south of Delhi, and he had been picked up from the Ajmer bus stand by the Venus manager. The problem with Penis, and the reason he had acquired this unfortunate nickname, was that he had a lisp and couldn’t get his tongue around the letter ‘f’. So whenever he turned up take our dishes away, he innocently enquired ‘Penis?’ instead of ‘Finish?’ This amusing slip provoked a variety of responses, ranging from, ‘No thanks, I’ve already got one’ (me) to ‘My room or yours?’ (Nick). Later on, some tourist took it the wrong way and kneed poor Penis in the groin, rendering him instantly unemployable. He was back at the bus stand the next day.
Chapter 15
Susie
At some point in the evening we were joined by Susie and her shy new husband, Raju. Susie and Raju were the unlikeliest couple I had ever met. She was a gobby redhead from Dagenham, about as East-End as they come, and he was a pint-sized tea boy from Pushkar with not one word of English.
‘People come to India for many reasons,’ Susie confided. ‘To find themselves, to lose themselves, to make money, or simply to hang out. In my case, it was to forget a terrible marriage. Look at this!’
She handed me a photograph of her first wedding. I was flabbergasted. It was hard—no, it was impossible to reconcile the shapely young blonde on that faded photo with the emaciated, copper-headed hippy chick sitting beside me.
‘Is that really you?’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, before my husband cheated on me with my own sister. I had a motto back then: show me a man, and I’ll show you a bastard!’
Susie had travelled to India two years before, having taken a vow of everlasting chastity. Then she met Raju, and her vow was promptly broken. In fact, she seemed to feel it important to describe—in great detail—the many ways in which it had been broken, and the many places. What Raju lacked in English he evidently made up for in erotic dexterity and imagination. One year later, inevitably, along came baby Om Prakash, born on the same rooftop hovel Susie called home, and spoilt rotten by all the neighbouring Indians.
Susie was happy in India. She had gone native in a way that even Nick and Anna had never managed. She cooked her own bread, rice, and vegetables, she spoke fluent Hindi with the locals (albeit in a wide-boy accent), and she wore just two changes of threadbare clothing. She had ‘married’ Raju in a traditional ceremony to please Indian custom, and dressed little Om Prakash in Rajasthani costumes, dotting his brow with coloured bindi spots and painting his huge, wondering eyes with black kohl. Now a second baby was on the way, and she was considering going back to Dagenham. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt they would all be better off in the West.
The best thing about Susie, I decided, was that she was so genuine, with no pretences at all. She instantly adopted everyone around the table into her own family, dubbing us the ‘Pushkar Posse’ and insisting we touch base with her every time we blew into town.
The common denominator, of course, was not Susie, but Ram. Directly or indirectly, we were all taking inspiration from his innocence, his charm, and his eagerness to incorporate the values of his world with those of ours. Without him, we were just aliens on a distant planet – tolerated, welcomed even, but never entirely trusted. With him, we could form our own tribe.
The following day happened to be a Full Moon, the most fortuitous time to visit the desert, and Ram suggested what would become an annual tradition – the Full Moon Camel Safari. He arranged for five camels to wait for us at the far side of the lake bridge—the fifth being for his very first girlfriend, a young and pretty Japanese student named Eri. I was both surprised and happy that Ram had finally found romance. I wasn’t sure how Ram’s family would view it, but of one thing I was certain: Eri had looked past Ram’s withered legs and, like myself, she had seen the shining light within.
We set out around dusk, just as a flock of giant fruit bats took flight and sailed overhead, flapping silently from one ancient banyan tree to another. We set up camp at an old hospitality building and watched the evening sky turn a deep, velvety blue as the thin clouds burned a vivid rose-pink before fading into darkness. Night fell quickly, leaving us with no electricity, only oil lamps. A bonfire was lit, bread rotis, and cooked vegetables were passed around, and Ram guided us all to a rise where we were treated to an unforgettable sight: the sun setting and the moon rising at the same time. The Full Moon emerged from behind the mountains like a huge copper penny, and just hung there, glowing ethereal o
range on the horizon, before slowly ascending into the heavens.
As night drew in, a troupe of local gypsy girls turned up, along with a succession of one-string fiddlers, and the assembly was entertained to an impromptu dance show. The girls, cheekily referred to by Ram as ‘desert tarts’, were bedecked in heavy tribal jewellery, wore colourful costumes, and ran around the fire screeching like banshees. To make the evening even more exciting, an electric storm illuminated the sky while the girls were dancing, treating us to spectacular flashes of multi-forked lightning.
Much later on, after a few bottles of triple-strength army rum, we drifted off to sleep under a canopy of stars. Sleeping out on the dunes was a magical experience. The night sky was clear, the desert silent. Bunched cacti and brush lay in stark relief to the marble-smooth sands like giant, surreal spiders frozen to the desert floor.
The sunrise, like the sunset, was another glorious spectacle. It heralded the arrival of a huge breakfast, cooked by the drivers, of traditional desert dishes and a big pot of steaming cardamom tea. After that, we took a slow, soothing ride back to Pushkar. The vista was an eerie, empty wasteland of rolling sands interspersed with bare rock and desolate scrub. From time to time Ram pointed out a chinkara (Indian gazelle) springing across the flatlands, or a flock of bright-plumed peacocks out for a stroll. Elsewhere we spotted the occasional fox, mongoose, or desert rat. A few hours of this and our minds switched off and began to play tricks. The most common mirage was of a five star hotel with a refrigerated pool and ice cold beers.
By this time, we had got used to the peculiar rocking-rolling sensation of camel-riding and our kidneys had had a jolly good shuffle. Then George made the mistake of complaining about an aching bum. His driver, a burnt-black individual determined to be of assistance, promptly hurled him face down on the sand and pummelled his buttocks until he screamed for mercy. Nick and Anna found this hilarious and began taking photographs. The grinning driver coaxed a humiliated George back up, then spent the rest of the trip giving him massages, both on and off the camel.
Back in Pushkar, with another sunset approaching, Ram led us all down to the lake for his ‘tour finale.’ As the time approached for darshan (putting the gods to bed), hundreds of tiny temples by the lakeside suddenly sprang to life. The air was filled with the clanging of bells, the beating of drums, and the hypnotic drone of prayer.
‘For many westerners,’ Susie informed us, ‘this is the nearest they’ll ever get to a “mystical” experience of India.’
Back in my room I reflected that I hadn’t had such a good time in ages. I had finally found some likeminded people with whom I could enjoy India, fellow trader-travellers who were here for fun, not just business. It was a new experience, having real friends in India, and it made me realise what I had been missing all along.
The next step, I thought wistfully, was finding a proper girlfriend. Yes, there had been Amy, but that had just been a short, drunken interlude. The business, or rather Spud’s interpretation of the business, had allowed me no romance at all except for the occasional one-night stand. And as soon as Spud got wind of things, a second night was out of the question. The most recent candidate, a pretty young stockbroker from Luton, had rung me up the day-after-the-night-before, and she had got Spud instead.
‘Oh, you must be Spud!’ she’d gushed with enthusiasm. ‘I’ve heard so much about you! Frank’s done my Chinese horoscope, and he says because he’s the year of the Horse and I’m the year of the Tiger and you’re the year of the Dog, we’ll all get on famously!’
‘No, we fucking won’t!’ grunted Spud. Then he hung up on her.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Spud didn’t want me to have a girlfriend. Spud wanted me all to himself. He wasn’t gay—I knew that—but he was certainly misogynist and possessive. Lou, his ex-wife, told me Spud had been so desperate to get married that he had proposed to every girl he went out with—on the very first date. The only reason she had said yes was that she had been extremely drunk at the time and caught completely off-guard. After that, he made her life a living hell, cutting her off from her friends, sneaking off with prostitutes, and constantly criticising her weight and general appearance. She warned me that Spud could ‘switch’ at any moment, transforming from a psycho-genius ‘funny man’ to a domineering tyrant. I waved off her warnings, thinking nothing of them. I reckoned I could handle it. After all, my stepfather had been just the same: one minute friendly and avuncular, the next a volcano of verbal abuse. I had learnt early to shrug it all off.
So when Spud had one of his ‘spells’, like refusing me sick leave or cruelly destroying my short-lived affairs, I didn’t let it affect me. I simply waited for the storm to pass, then I sat him down and quietly explained that his behaviour was unacceptable. Like the Rottweiler he was, Spud could be pacified in this way, though not for long. As soon as I let go of the leash he was off again, attacking everything in sight. It hadn’t been a problem until now; I had managed to direct Spud’s energies positively. But ever since the clash at Glastonbury, Lou’s prediction of disaster was slowly coming true. Spud’s street cred had been seriously damaged that day, and his attacks were no longer general. They were homing in on me.
The same day he trashed my dolki bags, for instance, Spud put Steve, my only friend on St Martin’s market, in hospital. Steve was a juggler and hardly a day had gone past without his coming up and saying, ‘Give me five minutes of your time and I’ll teach you to juggle.’
I gave him a whole hour one day. At the end of it he stood in puzzlement, scratching his head. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t juggle.’
For some reason this had made us laugh. From then on, Steve was always on hand to man my stall for me when I got called away, or to juggle away some of my more awkward customers. The only awkward customer he couldn’t juggle away was Spud. Spud found Steve on my pitch that day. When Steve asked him if he’d like to learn juggling too, Spud told him, ‘If you don’t fuck off right now, I’m going to hand you your balls.’
Unfortunately, Steve hadn’t taken him seriously.
Chapter 16
Troubles with Spud
Speaking of Spud, where was he? I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, and I was mad as hell. Not just because he wasn’t in India helping me out, but because of the phone call I had just made to Tim, our assistant, in London. According to Tim, Spud had only that day flown for India and was proceeding directly on to Jaipur by train. That meant he wouldn’t be staying in Delhi, he wouldn’t get the message I had left him there, and he wouldn’t be bringing all those beads from Pema to Gordhan for export. What that meant was that we were going to lose over a million rupees of profit.
‘What a cock-up!’ I fumed to myself. Spud was like a chess piece with the word ‘random’ pinned to it. I could no longer predict what he was going to do next.
Rather than brood on negatives, however, I began to consider alternatives. Who did I know who would do anything—even board a night bus to Delhi at the drop of a hat – to do me a favour? One name sprang to mind: Satish Agarwal.
Satish had a shop in the centre of Pushkar market. He had been supplying me with goods—mainly woollen jackets—for the past two years. The best thing about Satish, the one thing I found most rare and touching, was that whatever I wanted—even obscure things like rare Tibetan beads or antique Victorian rupees—Satish would bend heaven and earth to find them.
‘Oh yes!’ he would say. ‘I see this thing in the village yesterday. I will bring it!’
Half an hour later I was in Satish’s shop explaining my predicament to him, using the most desperate terms. Satish’s response was better than I’d anticipated.
‘Come on!’ he replied happily. ‘What you want? I go to Delhi. It is my duty!’
Within minutes he was on board a taxi bound for Pema’s shop, with a thousand dollars of my money, to collect the stranded goods.
I waved him a grateful goodbye, wondering as I d
id so what made Satish so very obliging. A couple of days earlier he had sold me a thousand cotton shirts for less than it cost him to make them.
‘No problem,’ had been his smiling response. ‘Maybe you give me better price next time!’
I wasn’t sure about those shirts, though. I was dreading another lecture from Spud.
*
A few days later everyone went their separate ways. Nick and Anna headed down south to Madras, George back to the States, Susie to Raju’s village, and me to Jaipur to meet Spud. It was time, we all agreed, to leave Pushkar. The climate had become uncustomarily hot, and several travellers had fevers and chills caused by sleeping sweaty under draughty fans. Every room in town was full of cockroaches and ants, and there was a power-cut every couple of hours.
Before leaving, I took a chance and dropped in on Ram. I hadn’t seen my old friend in days and, considering the climate, I was a little concerned. I found Ram in his shop, his hair raging wildly around his head, his eyes wide.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
He mopped his brow, waiting to catch his breath before he explained. ‘I am having very big fight with mosquito!’ he panted. ‘I kill them all—twenty or more—and put them in ashtray!’
Ram had only just returned from Jaiselmer, he told me. After once again missing his shot at Mister Desert, he had vanished into the dunes for two days, drinking himself stupid on desert rum. The only thing that cheered him up and made our parting positive, was when I showed him a glum passport photo of Spud.
‘He look like he lose everything in business!’ Ram crowed, laughing so hard he fell off his crutches.