Rupee Millionaires

by Frank Kusy

  I was so tired of it all, so jaded and world-weary, that a buzzy bus ride to Jaipur was the last thing on my mind. It was all I could do to haul myself into a taxi on my last day in India, and take a short ride down to Paharganj. I was finally going to drop off my Thai silver with Bobby.

  But Bobby wasn’t there. The shutters of his shop were firmly shut and one of his neighbours told me he had ‘gone mountains, too much hot.’

  ‘Well,’ I thought wearily, ‘that’s it. That’s the final nail in my coffin. I will now be wandering into Heathrow with twenty-five kilos of counterfeit Thai jewellery plus twenty-five kilos of Indian jewellery—with no receipts, since I’d forgot to ask Bobby for any. So unless Mr Missal is too sick or too lazy to walk over to Terminal 4 on a Sunday, I’m dead in the water.’

  And I was too burnt out to care.

  *

  The scene at Indira Gandhi airport was chaos. It was a Saturday night, the most popular time to travel, and the whole concourse was a heaving mass of sweating bodies, some of them literally climbing over each other as they tried to find their flights.

  I located my own flight, Thai Airways, but there was a problem at check-in. An Indian family at the head of the queue was trying to get a fridge on board as ‘hand luggage.’ It wasn’t a particularly big fridge, but it was obviously not going to fit in an overhead locker. It wasn’t even a very good fridge, because they were trying to take it back to London for a replacement.

  While all this was going on, a quiet voice behind me said, ‘You look stressed, man. Anything wrong?’

  I turned round to face a small, bearded hippy wearing a benign smile and studying my anxious, twitching fingers. I hadn’t even been aware that my fingers were twitching, I was so much on edge. I could have told him the truth, that I was already dreading English customs, but I put a brave face on instead and said, ‘Hate flying. Always have.’

  The serene little figure nodded in sympathy and said, ‘Yeah, I know what you mean, man. Here, have some of these. You’ll sleep like a baby!’ With that, he stuffed a strip of ten white tablets into my hand and told me to take two whenever I felt nervous.

  That was the start of the flight from hell. It started out okay – I had quiet people sitting next to me and no reason to complain. But then the lights went out, and my insomnia kicked in. With seven hours to go and nothing to do but worry about Mr Missal, I panicked. I took out the plastic strip and popped two pills. An hour went by and nothing happened, so I took a couple more. Round about 3am, when everybody else was sound asleep and I was still on full alert, I thought, “sod it,” and downed the whole packet.

  ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ I reasoned. ‘I’ll get into Heathrow massively sedated and won’t give a shit what they do to me!’

  The first sign of trouble came when I tried to go to the toilet but couldn’t. My legs had turned to rubber, and I couldn’t get out of my seat. At the same time I could feel an awful rumbling in my stomach, and I knew I was going to be sick. Very sick.

  I managed to get to my feet, then lurched down to the back of the plane, waking up a number of passengers as I did so, and stuck my head down a toilet. I retched and retched and retched until I was quite sure my guts were empty, but no, there I went again. My head stayed down that toilet until touchdown. At some point, the only medically trained stewardess on board fished the empty strip out of my pocket and informed me I had just overdosed on morphine.

  ‘Oh, that explains it,’ I gurgled miserably. ‘I’m allergic to opiates.’

  Just when I thought I was going to die, that the nightmare would never end, I was carried to the front of the plane, put into a wheelchair, and gently pushed—with two suitcases of contraband silver on my lap—into the customs hall.

  Tony saw me coming and jumped back in shock. ‘My God, Frank!’ he declared. ‘You look white as a sheet!’

  Mr Missal, who was standing right behind him, was not so sympathetic. ‘Oh, now he has a wheelchair,’ he sighed dismissively. ‘You think I am believing this?’

  Without further ado, he plunged into my rucksack and pulled out, of all things, my Buddhist prayer bag. For some reason he was sure I was hiding illicit receipts in there. But in amongst a thick wad of religious guidance notes I hardly ever looked at, he found something entirely different: a small paper packet of brown powder I had never seen before, cunningly taped to the back of a photograph of my mother. On it was written the single spidery word: ‘Smack’.

  It was Spud’s final act of revenge, a really evil one. I could only assume he’d planted this ‘heroin surprise’ when he’d posted the prayer bag back to me in ’98. As I sat in front of Mr Missal, sick as a dog, I reflected that I had been carrying this tiny time-bomb around for over three years! Had it turned up in India—or even worse in Thailand—I would have been facing a death sentence or at least twenty-five years in jail.

  By his expression, I could tell even Mr Missal was stunned by his discovery. All thoughts of silver penalties fled his mind as he calculated the prospect of a quick and immediate promotion. Here at last was a real criminal, one he could really take to town! He opened his mouth to pronounce awful judgement … but just as he did so, I lurched helplessly forward and projectile-vomited all over him. His entire starched-white uniform was soiled, top to toe, and the offending packet of brown powder flew across the concourse and disappeared into the ether.

  ‘Looks like chicken curry,’ Tony observed helpfully. ‘Isn’t that against your religion?’

  ‘Get him out of here!’ Mr Missal howled. ‘I am good Brahmin! I do not deserve such treatment! He has made me unclean!’

  Tony wheeled me quickly out of the hall and into the bright light of day. ‘Well,’ he said chirpily. ‘That’s one way of not paying any duty!’

  I didn’t quite share the joke. I still felt sicker than I ever had at any time in my life. But as Tony drove me home in his car, I realised how lucky I had been.

  And surprise, surprise. I was back in business.

  *

  Spud’s final action – his heroin ‘surprise’ – didn’t go down well. I had faced the death penalty in Asia once before, for falling asleep in the back of a bus going into Malaysia and then trying to get back out again with an unstamped passport. Charged with illegal immigration, I still remembered the terror of sitting in a cell with a noose hanging off the ceiling, waiting to be rescued. I had been, but only when my Thai bus-driver had chanced by and identified me.

  This time, there would have been no such lucky escape. Spud, who had once saved my life, had come close to ending it. And after everything else – all the death-threats, the abuse, the tax scams, and the general persecution – this was just a bit too much.

  ‘What a complete and utter bastard!’ I fretted a few days later as I recovered. ‘He must have planned that years ago!’

  But if I was contemplating revenge, I was saved the trouble. Word soon trickled through that Lou, Spud’s ex-wife, had taken half his house, and the Inland Revenue had the other half. As for Spud himself, coked and stroked, he was already dead.

  Or so I thought.

  Postscript

  20th October 2012

  When Sharon rang that fateful day last summer, I couldn’t believe it. My bald nemesis, who I had thought dead for ten years, had resurfaced – very much alive! And he had not so much returned from the grave, he had never actually been in it! To top it all off, someone had told him I was writing a book about him, and he was gunning for me once again.

  What was I to do?

  The first thing I did was close my business. I had to. Wherever I went Spud was just one step behind me, asking all my shops where was I, had they seen me lately? It was only a matter of time before one of them cracked and spilled the beans.

  The second thing I did was talk to Madge. If I went ahead with this book, I was afraid she might someday be blown up in her sleep. ‘It’s not enough this time,’ I told her, ‘to change my name, my passport, my driving licence and my entire appearan
ce. I may have to leave the country!’

  But I needn’t have worried. The phone rang again this morning, and this time it wasn’t Sharon. It was Spud.

  ‘I’ve read a bit of your book now,’ said the familiar menacing voice down the airwaves. ‘And it’s bollocks.’

  ‘Bollocks?’ I stuttered, my mind going into freefall. ‘Don’t you like it, then?’

  ‘Like it? I love it! It’s my kind of bollocks.’

  ‘But I have you down as a dangerous, drug-addled, control-freak psychopath!’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But you’re forgetting one thing.’

  ‘Oh, what’s that?’

  Spud gave a low chuckle.

  ‘I always wanted to be famous.’

  ***

  Off the Beaten Track: My Crazy Year in Asia

  Available now on all Amazon channels:

  http://authl.it/21z

  Hi folks – Frank here!

  Thank you so much for reading my book, I hope you enjoyed it! To subscribe to my mailing list and receive a FREE COPY of my first crazy travel book Kevin and I in India just paste http://eepurl.com/bld-35 into your web browser and follow the link. You’ll also be the first to know when my next book is ready to be launched. Not long now!

  P.S. If you like, you can find me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Wussyboy

  Or catch me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.kusy.5?ref=tn_tnmn

  Or if you get the urge, you can always email me: sparky-frank@hotmail.co.uk

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere gratitude goes to the following people: Terry Murphy (for editing and laughs), Roman Laskowski (for meticulous formatting, web admin and laughs), Anna Donovan (for my lovely cover), Brenda Donovan (for editing my first drafts), Cherry Gregory (for the final beta read), Judy Adams (for editing and steadfast support), Nick Kenrick (for pics and tricks), Anna Norris (for lizard hugs), Julie Shaw (for believing in this book like no other), Genevieve Graham (for a top pro-edit), and all my friends on Authonomy for all their lovely comments. You have all helped bring the work of my heart to life.

  A special mention to my wife, Margreet, for living the dream with me and being the best part of it.

  About the author

  FRANK KUSY is a professional travel writer with nearly thirty years experience in the field. He has written guides to India, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Of his first work, the travelogue Kevin and I in India (1986), the Mail on Sunday wrote: ‘This book rings so true of India that most of us will be glad we don’t have to go there.’

  Born in England (of Polish-Hungarian parents), Frank left Cardiff University for a career in journalism and worked for a while at the Financial Times. India is his first love, the only country he knows which improves on repeated viewings. He still visits for business and for pleasure at least once a year. He lives in Surrey, England, with his wife and his little cat Sparky.

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  Off the Beaten Track: My Crazy Year in Asia, Kevin and I in India, Ginger the Gangster Cat, Ginger the Buddha Cat, and He ain’t Heavy, He’s my Buddha – all by Frank Kusy (Grinning Bandit Books).

  The Ultimate Inferior Beings by Mark Roman (Cogwheel Press).

  Weekend in Weighton and Warwick the Wanderer – both by Terry Murphy (Grinning Bandit Books).

  Scrapyard Blues, and The Albion – both by Derryl Flynn (Grinning Bandit Books).

  The Girl from Ithaca, The Walls of Troy, and Percy the High Flying Pig – all by Cherry Gregory (Grinning Bandit Books).

  Flashman and the Sea Wolf, Flashman and the Cobra, Flashman in the Peninsula, and Flashman’s Escape – all by Robert Brightwell (Grinning Bandit Books).