by Frank Kusy
Peter was right. I knew I was giving work to various tailors and silversmiths in Rajasthan, but was that really enough? I was supposed to be a Buddhist. I was supposed to care for and share with others less fortunate. So what was I doing in a swank four star hotel when most of Delhi was sleeping by the side of the road? It was with a deep sense of shame and disquiet that I finally fell asleep.
I was awoken around 11am by a room-boy with my breakfast: a full English breakfast complete with lashings of eggs, chips, sausages, and fresh filter coffee from a solid silver teapot. But Peter’s words still echoed in my mind, and I found I’d lost my appetite.
‘No like?’ asked the room-boy, waiting for his tip. ‘Why no like?’
To cheer me up, he switched on the brand new TV in my room and rammed the volume up to maximum. Then he proudly rattled off how many channels there were and flicked through them all to show me what to expect, though most of them were blank or had wavy-line static interference. The only crystal clear channel showed a fat, jolly Indian singing to a tree.
‘Now come Santa Barbara!’ predicted the room-boy, sitting on my bed. ‘Next come Nanny and Professor!’
I instantly stopped playing with my food and ushered him out the door. The last thing I needed right now was a teenage TV addict.
Around noon I forced myself from the hotel and out into the dank, stifling heat. I needed to visit the Thomas Cook office at the Imperial Hotel in Janpath so I could change some money. Once there, I loaded up with a heavy bagful of rupees—all stapled up in wads of 50s and 100s—and walked around the corner to Pema’s shop at No. 17, the Tibetan Bazar. It occurred to me that I was strolling the street, casually carrying around enough rupees to feed half of Delhi for a week. And that thought triggered off a memory of Spud whipping out a big roll of rupees in the middle of Main Bazar one day, and of the whole street instantly grinding to a halt.
‘Put that away!’ I had hissed at him. ‘These people have never seen so much money in their lives!’
I felt much better after I gave all my cash to Pema – it wasn’t burning a hole in my pockets anymore. I owed Pema big time from the previous trip, and I knew the money was going to poor people, mainly Tibetan refugees, who really needed the work. I also knew—or thought I did—that Pema himself didn’t make much from his business. The only luxury he had ever afforded himself, to my knowledge, was his air-conditioning unit, which started blasting frigid air down my neck the moment I entered the shop.
Pema was in good spirits. He had finally, after all these years, got his head around making a profit. I knew this because as soon as I pointed at a bone bracelet I liked, Pema said, ‘Actually, the price of this item has gone up.’ When asked why, he said, ‘Electric city gone, production limited.’ I eyed him warily and demanded a further explanation. ‘Too many power-cut,’ shrugged Pema. ‘No work possible in dark, and no work means little production, so they ask more price to make up loss.’
‘Well, fair enough,’ I thought. ‘No bullshit there. Pay the man and shut up.’
Besides, I didn’t have much choice. One look around Pema’s shop, now packed with other foreign buyers, told me all I needed to know. Pema didn’t give a fig whether I bought from him or not.
In Bobby’s shop later on, I met a young guy named Christof, who was the main importer of silver into Germany. I told Christof I was having doubts about my business, that I was a Buddhist who had come to India to seek enlightenment, not riches, and I now felt I was exploiting the country, not contributing to it.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Christof. ‘I come to India to live like a sadhu, and after two years of getting up to meditate at four in the morning and living on three bowls of rice a day, I can tell you one thing for sure: no one who comes here for enlightenment has success. Imagine you grew up in the western world and have a completely different culture, education, and belief system. With this, you come to India looking for the spiritual life, and the effort is too much. Even the Indians, who do this all the time, have only one or two per cent success. And those few yogis who have found their way are eager only to continue their personal practice. They have no longing to teach other people anything.’
I asked Christof what he had learnt from all his spiritual searching, and he said, ‘I learnt that my place is not in the mountains. It is in the world.’
More accurately, he added, it was in the world of silver. He had met a Swiss guy up in the hills who was bringing in jewellery from Thailand and Indonesia, then selling it on to Kashmiris in India. When the Swiss guy’s wife got pregnant and they tried to get home from Kashmir, Christof had helped them back to Delhi, braving martial law and nightly curfews in Srinagar, and had been rewarded with ten kilos of high quality silver for his troubles. That was how he’d got started in business.
In two days it would be Gandhi’s birthday, Bobby informed us, so all the shops of Paharganj would be shutting down—except for those who paid a five thousand rupee charge to the government for the privilege of staying open.
‘Nobody pays five thousand rupees,’ Bobby said with a smirk. ‘If any policeman check them, they pay him five hundred rupees. Much cheaper than five thousand!’
I asked where Babu was. I had brought a couple of extra special ‘books’ for him from Bangkok, and I was anticipating his delighted grin. But Babu had just got married, said Bobby, and had temporarily lost interest in books. He had been gone the past month, experiencing the real thing.
Chapter 34
The Dark Side of Delhi
It was typical, but the one time I had no expectations of Bobby — no order placed, nothing to wait for or check out — he had a full stock of amazing stone jewellery. It was so amazing, actually, that Christof and I were soon fighting over it. Yes, there we were: two so-called holy men squabbling over baubles, bangles, and beads. And when I said I had no money left, Bobby just smiled and said, ‘No problem boss, pay me from UK!’
As Christof and I tottered out afterwards with a big sack of silver apiece, he invited me to share a meal. His restaurant of choice was the ‘cheap and best’ Khosla Cafe at the bottom of Main Bazar.
‘This is where poor people come,’ said Christof, ‘when all they can afford is a simple meal of dhal, rice, and curd.’ It was also, he added, a great place to meet other travellers, since everybody ate together on long communal tables.
The first person we met there was a morphine addict named John.
‘You won’t believe it, man,’ said John. ‘But they’ve got this pharmacy at Delhi airport, right there in the departure lounge, and you can score morphine across the counter. One time I missed a plane home because of that and spent three days crashed out there. Best three days of my life!’
According to Christof, who knew John quite well, this was where he had first acquired his habit. And as dusk drew in, a number of Indians appeared to help him feed it.
‘Mister John!’ they hissed in the darkness. ‘Hashish, opium, heroin, what you like?’
Mister John duly disappeared, along with half the cafe’s other clientele, only to reappear minutes later with his pockets rustling with little packets. He then began working on his big decision of the day: what kind of lassi to have. Should he have the banana lassi, a lemon lassi, a mango lassi, or simply a plain lassi? The choice was simply staggering. I watched, fascinated, as the moon began to rise and John still had not come to a verdict. Every so often he would turn to us and seriously enquire, ‘What do you think? I had the banana yesterday. What about the papaya today?’ And we would nod sagely, and say, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea, man. Go for it!’ But then he didn’t, just sat there for another hour until his morphine guy turned up and saved him the decision.
‘What a sad sack!’ I observed. ‘The whole day gone and he can’t even choose a drink!’
Christof was unruffled. He knew India, he said, and it was full of freaks who only hung out here because the drugs were cheap and readily available. Used-up addicts who lacked even the faintest interest in the country
or its people. He only ate here himself, he added, because ‘you can see all India passing by from this cafe—a non-stop procession of weddings, funerals, beggars, travellers, pedlars, pilgrims, and animals. It’s like an endless Hindi road movie, and the best thing about it is that it doesn’t cost one rupee!’
Around 9pm, I trudged back to Bobby’s to ask if he could send my Thai silver back to the UK by courier. I couldn’t take it home by hand, because it was sure to be confiscated.
‘No problem, boss!’ said Bobby brightly, ‘but now I am just closing. And there are festivals for next few days, so I go see my family. How much longer are you in India? Another week? Bring me stuff at end, okay?’
It wasn’t okay at all, but what other choice did I have? Indian festivals and holidays – they were the ultimate penalty cards in the Indian board game I was playing, and I really should have seen them coming. All the way home, I was kicking myself for leaving the Thai goods in the hotel and not giving them straight to Bobby, but it was too late for lamentation. The dice had been cast, and they had fallen against me.
Back at the Oberoi, I took stock of my situation. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I might be falling out of love with India. Either that, or too many events were conspiring to stop me from enjoying it. I couldn’t get my head around going to Jaipur or Pushkar this time since it was too hot, and had resigned myself to a whole week in Delhi, holed up in the Oberoi like some hippy prince in exile.
I made a call home to Madge to cheer myself up, but she couldn’t understand my decision. ‘You’re not going to Pushkar?’ she exclaimed. ‘But you love Pushkar!’ I told her Gordhan and Satish were coming to Delhi to take my orders in my room, and she couldn’t believe that either. ‘A whole week in a hotel room?’ she asked, sounding horrified. ‘And you’re dragging those poor people halfway across Rajasthan just to see you?’
I didn’t have much choice, I replied. I wasn’t staying at the Oberoi because I liked it. I couldn’t go outside because of the torrential rains and the 95 per cent humidity. I couldn’t go shopping because of the everlasting succession of festivals: first Durga, then Gandhi’s birthday, and finally Dussehra. And I couldn’t fly home early because I was waiting for Bobby. Also, my airline required a one week minimum stay in India or else I’d have to pay the full, non-discounted fare. In short, being completely out of funds, I was stranded.
With so much time on my hands, I took to reading all the English language newspapers they kept shoving under my door. I also watched a lot of TV. By the third day I was scraping the walls. I knew I was going mad when a room-boy called up to see if I wanted anything, and I said no, I was watching Aerobics Oz-Style on Star Plus.
Seven days was too long to spend in Delhi, I decided. Somehow, sitting in that luxury suite—which most people would have given their right arm for—I was sinking into depression again. Yes, I was in India, but to all intents and purposes I was isolated from it. My tour of Thailand had left me so rundown, so burnt out, that here I was, in my favourite country in the world, and I couldn’t get off the bed.
I had lost the Buddhist middle way again. By taking on two countries at once, by obsessing over money and business to the exclusion of all else, I had lost my balance. One step further, and I would descend into an irrevocable tailspin of self-destruction, just like Spud. In the end, that realisation alone was worth the experience. Yes, this long week of lonely confinement had been painful, but it was another important step on my road to recovery.
Chapter 35
Burn Out
My long-awaited visitors arrived on day six. First there was Gordhan, looking hot and glum, and then came Satish, looking even hotter and very sedated. One too many bhang lassis, I surmised. Neither of them had much to say. They just wanted to soak in the air conditioning, take my orders, and go home. Gordhan had met my old friend, Fateh, he reported, and Fateh wasn’t happy. His son Ajay had just got back from America and was totally transformed. He now had a crew-cut and a portable stereo, and wore brand name trainers. Most disconcertingly, he had picked up so many ghetto slang expressions that his own parents couldn’t understand him. Indu had apparently asked what he thought of the States and he’d replied, ‘Well, uh, that’s kind of a tough question, man.’ So tough indeed that she never got an answer.
Satish was a little more forthcoming. He waited for Gordhan to leave, then asked, ‘Why you no come Pushkar? You miss big occasion! You miss brooming of Brahmins!’
Apparently Rajiv Gandhi had not died in vain. One of his main reforms, the right of harijans or untouchables to take political office, had finally percolated through to Pushkar. Thus it was that when Pushkar had held the ‘open lottery’ for the local elections, the name that came out of the hat for the post of Municipal Chairman was not only an untouchable, but a lady road sweeper. The resident Brahmins couldn’t believe it. Here was someone whose shadow they would have avoided the day before—since standing in it would have required weeks of self-purification—suddenly elevated to a position to give them orders. Even worse, as the lottery went on, other untouchables were elected onto the same council, making her position quite unassailable. At first, said Satish, she’d kept her broom by her side to hit any Brahmins who might complain. Then she realised she was in power for five long years and needed only the ‘broom of government sanction’ to sweep aside any opposition. Indeed, since her post entailed control over vital things like lighting and sanitation, the Brahmins had taken to calling her ‘Mother Goddess’ and kissing her feet. After all, they didn’t want tons of garbage unexpectedly dumped on their doorsteps.
Satish had seen George in Pushkar market two days before. ‘He lose all his hair, cut it off. Now he look like very poor man. I don’t think he can buy chapati!’ Likely to join him, according to Satish, was my old friend, Ram, who was on the run yet again—this time for passing bad cheques. This news made me despair, and I wished I had never bought Ram his camels all those years before. Money and power seemed to have gone to his head.
Just as Spud’s empire had collapsed around him, so too had Ram’s. He had acquired Spud’s habit of buying on credit and had obtained the lease on a string of handicraft shops in Pushkar by paying the minimum deposit possible—using Eri’s money as collateral then failing to pay the balance. Just like Spud, he’d overextended himself. As the bills piled up and people lost trust in him, Ram fled Pushkar forever and hid out in his village.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of Ram’s story. Whereas Spud had turned to drugs, Ram had turned to drink. And one fateful day, just as he thought he had successfully evaded his creditors, he took one drink too many and ran his car straight into an oncoming truck. He had survived, but his face had been so disfigured that even Rose, who had rushed him to England for reconstructive surgery, had trouble recognising him. Now he was crippled at both ends, top and bottom, and everyone was agreed on one thing: that Ram’s bad karma had finally caught up with him and that it was heaven’s justice.
‘I wonder whether he wouldn’t have been happier staying poor,’ I said. ‘At least he would have had a few friends.’
‘He is now crazy life,’ commented Satish. ‘Even Rose no speak him.’
‘Really?’ I exclaimed, shocked. ‘Why not?’
This, as it turned out, was the saddest story of all. Poor Rose had learnt that Ram had spawned three children by his village wife, and—this being India—he had never had any intention of leaving them to marry her. She had sacrificed some of the best years of her life, and was now regarded as a whore in the country she loved. All for the love of a two-faced con artist on crutches. I determined that if I ever met Ram again I would treat him like an untouchable and simply turn my back on him.
After Satish left, I began packing my bags, making ready to leave India the following day. As I did so, I came across a single page of an old diary I had written back in 1990, the year I had started doing business. In this diary, which was actually a tape transcript, I was in love with India; I couldn’t get enough of it.
‘Now I’m in the country itself,’ I’d enthused. ‘Vast, heaving, cacophonic – and the rush of sensations is like being shot full of adrenalin. I just want to write about it, or paint it, or put it to music. I feel energised, buzzed up, ready to explode with the sheer power of it. Two days into Delhi and I’m ready to get on a bus. Any bus to Jaipur will do. Six trippy hours to observe the mad traffic passing by, to get my head back into India, to let a new mass of thoughts and impressions roll in. And then, at the other end, I’ll be in another hotel, unpacking my bags, putting up the mosquito net, waiting for the inevitable power-cut, and excitedly recounting the day’s events into my tape-recorder by candlelight.’
Those days were over. Ten years on, and I wasn’t sure when—or if—I would ever return to India. Maybe it was just a passing phase. I certainly hoped so, but with Ram gone beyond redemption and the Pushkar Posse no longer coming to Pushkar, I felt like a dying breed, the last of the old style Indian traders.
Where were Nick and Anna? Gone back to Canada for good and having their first baby. Where were Susie and Raju? Finally returned to Dagenham, with three kids, and living on social security. And where was Spud? Propping up the door of a Soho nightclub, according to one report, coked up to the eyeballs and begging for tips.
As for me, it seemed like a good time to stop. The Asian markets were running down fast, and the old hippy-dippy fashion in clothing and jewellery was giving way to copy designer stuff which I couldn’t legally import. Foreign buyers were now thin on the ground, and those few remaining, like George, were barely hanging on. It felt like the end of an era.