Let's Go Mad

by Rob Binkley

  “She’s so beautiful.”

  “She’s a filthy, dirty girl. Just your type,” Brian said.

  I looked at Barbie’s dirty blonde hair, tattered dress, and filthy ashen features. She’d been through hell, just like us.

  “Wish I was back home in bed with a California girl who loved me,” I said.

  “You have no home. No bed. And no girl,” Brian said.

  “God, I hate you.”

  Brian, Barbie, and I lay in our beds for hours talking about women and staring at the fan going round and round.

  We finally dragged ourselves into the sunlight and caught a train out of this madness to Lucknow—on our way to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We took our little girlfriend with us. She would stay with us the rest of the trip.

  After our train pulled into Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around to clear our heads. It didn’t work. We toured the Bara Imambara, a beautiful complex built by Shia Muslims. The only comment Brian made the entire tour was, “Bara means big.”

  “Really? That’s all you got?”

  “That’s all I got.” Brian said his brain cells were Silly Putty after the last two days. I knew the feeling. “Feels like I have a blanket of bhang lassi fog draped over my head.”

  With Brian checked out mentally, I went to the Book to try and get some real information on my surroundings. I learned the Bara Imambara is a shrine built for mourning the death of some guy named Imam Husayn ibn Ali, who died at the battle of Karbala in 680. That was all I could read. I had to put the Book away; it was hurting what brain I had left.

  We spent our only evening in Lucknow watching a Muslim demonstration at one of the crazy downtown markets, which was complete chaos with everyone running around. In the middle of the maelstrom, thousands of cows were standing around shitting and staring into the void.

  “I’ve noticed the cows are the only calm ones in India,” Brian said.

  “They should be. What do they have to worry about?”

  We spent the rest of the night at the train station waiting for our train to Agra. It was late but we were still recovering so we were happy to just take in the scene. When the beggars approached us, we recoiled at first but these guys were very nice, helpful even; the total opposite of the touts who accosted us by the airport.

  We finally caught our night train to Agra. We decided to upgrade to a first class cabin, which was twice the price but only about four dollars for the long haul across India to the Taj Mahal. We quickly fell asleep in our wooden bunks to finally purge our souls of the bhang lassi experiment, for good.

  We woke at ten o’clock the next morning. I looked at my watch and realized we’d missed our stop. “Dude, wake up, we overslept!” I roused Brian, who sat up with his sleep mask on. “Mom, is that you?” We got up and grabbed our stuff and went looking for the conductor, who told us we missed our stop. “You oversleep, very bad,” then he laughed at us for missing our stop by four hours.

  We blamed our night of fitful slumber on all the rowdy kids who were playing near our bunks until all hours. At one point during the night, I sat up and yelled, “Where are these kids’ mothers??” But I got no response, just more laughter. I remember Brian (in his sleep mask) trying to shoo them away like they were raccoons that invaded our campsite. At some point they passed out. Maybe they were high on bhang lassis.

  We hopped off the train at the next stop, which landed us in the middle of nowhere in a tiny Indian village where the people gawked at us like they’d never seen a white person before, which they probably hadn’t. The village children all came running up to us and just stared. Brian smiled and handed out all the chocolate he had left in his pack. “This is just like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” Brian said. “Chilled Monkey brains.”

  “Never saw it.”

  “You never saw Temple of Doom? What kind of adventurer are you?”

  “I played soccer.”

  We spent the day in the village train depot watching everyone watching us. We enjoyed being off the beaten path of anything touristy. No touts were in sight. This was the real India and we liked it.

  Our third class train finally arrived four hours later. The ride back was quite an experience; everyone onboard had to share their seats with at least two other people. On the ride, we taught some kids English; Brian even taught them some pickup lines, which he told them “will come in very useful when you hit puberty.” Of course the kids had no idea what he was saying, but they knew what the lines were for: sex is a universal language.

  After the five-hour ride back, we finally chugged into Agra for the second time, but this time we got off. We found a rickshaw wallah who knew where he was going to peddle us a few kilometers northeast into the city where we checked into the Kamel Guesthouse and passed out from exhaustion.

  The next day we ventured out into the chowks (or marketplaces) in the bright sweltering town of Agra, which is a tourist mecca because of its crown jewel—the Taj Mahal, whose very name has become a cliché for opulent architecture around the world. Agra was once part of the Mughal Empire and its legacy can be still be felt everywhere in the form of all the ancient tombs, forts, and mausoleums that were open for tourists to visit.

  After touring the chowks, we set off to see the mighty Taj. As we approached we could see it overlooking the holy Yamuna River from a large bend. We got closer and ran into more touts, vendors, and rickshaw wallahs lining the paths around the Taj. None of these guys were angry, though—more like annoying, but we kept our sense of humor while politely turning them down.

  The moment we entered the grounds of the Taj Mahal, also known as the “Crown of Palaces,” we were in awe of its majesty. The morning sun was warming it up like a huge glowing marble. We had to wear our sunglasses to gaze at the brightness of its exterior.

  It was about a hundred and twenty degrees outside. Every hour or so, we found a shaded area inside or in one of the opulent gardens to reflect and recover from the heat.

  We learned the Taj was built starting in the 1630s by a lovestruck emperor named Shah Jahan who ruled during the Mughal Empire. The legend goes, he was so grief stricken after his wife, a Persian princess, died during childbirth, that he set out to build her the greatest mausoleum in the world. It was an amazing tribute to the woman he loved.

  “Do you think you could ever love someone so much?” I asked Brian.

  “I want to say yes, but I don’t know. Maybe I have a black heart.”

  “What about what’s-her-name?”

  “Barbie?”

  “No, Carrie.”

  “Never called her back.”

  “Maybe you’re right, then.”

  After our day tour of the Taj, we ran into a pack of ill-tempered cows on the way back to our hotel. I could tell they were up to no good. When I walked past a few of them, I sensed they were watching me from their peripheral vision. I’d heard if they saw movement they’d swing their heads at you, which doesn’t give you much time to react if you’re sharing a tight alleyway with them.

  We tried sneaking past the herd; Brian went first. It was a tight squeeze but we had almost gotten past the procession when one swung its head and got me in the hip. “Aggggh!” I cried out. “I’m gored, call 911. Call anyone!”

  I was bleeding all over myself. Brian was quick to react; he helped me escape the bovine traffic jam and found us a nook with some steps where we could sit down to examine my bleeding hip.

  “Our first bull-on-man injury of the trip. Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, it bloody hurts!”

  “This could get infected with all the filth,” Brian said just as a cow walking by nearly shit on our heads.

  “Yeah, no shit … no pun intended.” I was in intense pain. I glared at all the cows walking by while we tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure. “I’ve never wanted a burger more than I do right now!” The herd of cows mooed.

  Brian helped me limp back to the Kamel Guesthouse
where the electricity was out for the night so I wasn’t able to examine my injury in the mirror. Also, we had no first aid kit so I washed my puncture wound as best I could, then sat on my bed to drink beer and smoke hash with Brian.

  “This is not a good black and blue night!” I moaned.

  “Stop screaming. We got enough hot air in here already,” Brian said.

  With no electricity, our fan—which we paid extra to get—was useless. It was a hellish hundred and ten degrees in our room, so I just lay there in pain staring at the unmoving fan blades. I tried to use telekinesis to make the fan blades move. It didn’t work, so I sweated profusely into my sheets until I finally drifted off to sleep.

  I woke at the crack of dawn with my hip hurting so bad I had to immediately smoke more hash to ease the pain. I considered smoking the opium we’d bought back in Varanasi, but Brian said he lost it during our bhang lassi bender.

  “Maybe a stray dog ran off with it.”

  “That bastard mutt probably died a painless death,” I moaned.

  After I smoked enough hash to think straight, I manned up and we caught a bus to Jaipur, the “Pink City,” which is the capital of Rajasthan, India’s largest state, which borders Pakistan. It was our first venture north into the “Land of Kings” where the Great Indian Desert resides. Jaipur is a rare bird because it’s one of the few ancient cities that has a modern feel—the streets are not a succession of crazy winding alleys, they were actually paved. It was a pleasant surprise that there were some amenities for us to enjoy.

  I limped around like a crippled beggar to the Jewelers Market and then the Hawa Mahal palace, which is a unique piece of architecture. They call it the “Palace of the Winds” because it’s just a high-screen facade made out of red and pink sandstone. It was built specifically for the women of the royal household so they could watch the street festivities while remaining unseen by the masses.

  Outside the Hawa Mahal, touts accosted us every chance they had; they walked beside us begging, demanding, and trying to con us out of money. They had ingenious schemes: Some put a guilt trip on you if you didn’t give in to their scams. Others tried to force you into committing to their scam, or they threatened to call the cops on you. But the worst were the touts who, if you ignored them, started yelling, “What, you hate Indians?” which will get your attention real quick, especially when you’re surrounded by hundreds of locals who begin staring at you like you’re some kind of racist—you’ll pay anything to shut the guy up.

  During our tour, we walked up to two guys playing with some king cobras out in front of their house. They were nice enough to let us play with them. They showed us how to make the cobras dance. Brian was excited to be a snake charmer! I asked them if they had any baby cobras for sale—no luck.

  Our last night in Jaipur, we saw an Indian movie from Bollywood. The movie was a funny mix of dancing, fighting, and singing. Of course, we had no idea what was happening since there were no subtitles and we didn’t speak Hindi. When intermission came, we thought it was over and left. “Did we just walk out at halftime?” I was confused since we were leaving while others were coming back inside.

  “Oh well,” Brian said. “We know how it turns out. The male hero saves the day in every Bollywood movie.”

  “Just like back home,” I said.

  The next day, my hip was healing nicely, “No gangrene for you!” Brian said, “Let’s keep moving.” We continued our slog across India by taking a bus to Pushkar, a quaint little mountain village nestled into the hillside around a beautiful lake surrounded by ghats. We checked into the Pushkar Palace Hotel, which had a really laid back atmosphere. Pushkar is a beautiful place to relax; we could finally take a break from the constant chaos of the other villages. The only downside was there was no meat or alcohol served anywhere in town.

  “They’re starving us with sobriety … not a good combo.” Brian was not happy and neither was I; we’d both lost a ton of weight on the trip so far. We’d also been forced to give up our workout regime months ago and were now in pure survival mode. We walked around Pushkar with our stomachs grumbling. We found a restaurant that served bhang lassi. I looked at Brian. “Dear God, do we dare?”

  “Oh, we dare.” Brian walked in and ordered two. We gulped them in moderation and prayed they weren’t going to creep up and send us into the stratosphere. Thankfully these were lower-grade bhangers that just gave us a nice buzz.

  After our liquid lunch, we wandered around the village, appropriately stoned. There were all the typical street vendors and cobra charmers lining the dirt paths leading around the lake. Several snake vendors tried to sell me their full-grown cobras, but they were too big to smuggle in my pants.

  At some point, I got the bright idea of getting my hand henna tattooed (it was either that or my head), so I found a lady tattoo artist who had a tent next to a snake charmer that had six cobras dancing nearby. “Free entertainment,” I said and pointed at the snake dance party. Brian was burnt out on snakes so he sat down to read a book.

  While the henna artist worked her magic on my hand, I couldn’t help but notice this Indian mother nearby who was squeezing her milky nipple stream into one of her babies’ mouth. The exposed breast must have triggered something carnal in Brian because he looked up in time to witness the milk stream, then said, “That kid must have sharp teeth,” and went back to reading.

  It seemed like every woman in the village had at least three or four babies on their hips, with no husbands anywhere to be found. “Where were all the dads?” I said. “Doing ‘man’s’ work?’”

  Brian never looked up from his book, he just said, “You mean touting?”

  Later, with my hand freshly adorned with a crazy henna tattoo, we walked back to our hotel where we came upon a blind woman who had lost her nose in a fire. She was standing outside the hotel singing like an angel, yet she seemed invisible to the people rushing by. Even Brian, who was lost in his own thoughts, brushed right past her into the hotel but she stopped me in my tracks.

  She would sing a song then talk to herself, then sing another song. I couldn’t look away; she had this glowing aura that was like this spotlight from heaven shining down. It was hard to miss, yet everyone but me was missing it.

  She also stood out from the rest of the street people because she was not begging. While all these able-bodied men were asking for money, this disfigured songbird wasn’t taking tips. She didn’t even have a tip jar.

  I asked around and learned that she lived on the street. No one seemed to know her name or her story. I wanted to help her so I went into the restaurant next door and ordered an Indian pizza. When I returned outside to give her the pizza and some money, she had vanished.

  I went up to our room with her pizza and dropped it in front of Brian, who was doing yoga in his underwear. “You got pizza.”

  “Yeah, I was going to give it to this blind woman with no nose but she disappeared without a trace.”

  “Noseless women will do that,” Brian said.

  At night, going to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about that woman. Why was she stuck in my head? Was she real, or just another bhang lassi hallucination? It felt like some force was compelling me to find her the next day, wherever she was. Maybe she was one of those true Beat angels I’d been looking for my entire life.

  The next morning, I got up early and went outside to find my street angel and there she was again, singing her heart out, all by her lonesome. When I approached her and gave her some money, she grabbed my hand and thanked me profusely. Even though she was blind, she had these piercing green eyes that seemed so truthful and sincere.

  I wanted to say something to her but I didn’t speak Hindi, so I ran into the hotel and asked an older Indian woman if she would be “nice enough to be my translator so I can talk to the homeless woman outside? I need to speak with her.”

  The Indian woman agreed and followed me out. I bought us all some food and the three of us sat down on a long bench. I asked the blind woman
about herself. She said her name was Gita, and she had no home. I told her she had a beautiful name. Gita said her name meant “song” in Hindi. When she said her name, I remembered Brian had been reading The Bhagavad Gita all trip.

  I asked Gita why she was on the street. Where was her family? She told me she had not seen her family in years. Her father had kicked her out of the home when she was young, and she had not been home since. She said she did not want pity—she was very happy singing and was thankful that I liked her song.

  While she spoke, she seemed so serene and at peace in her own skin. It was amazing to meet someone who had been given this lot in life who was still so full of positive energy. I’d never felt anything like her spirit before; it gave me chills to be in her presence.

  I held Gita’s hand for a long time as we talked. When I said goodbye, I thanked her for talking to me, placed some more money in her palm, closed it, and kissed the top of her hand. I thought I may have been a bit too brazen kissing her hand, but she didn’t seem to mind and I didn’t care. She was beautiful.

  I walked back into the hotel with the Indian woman who had been translating our talk. She looked at me and said, “Gita is an angel of the streets. In suffering, she sings.” I told her the same thought had been echoing through my head since I first laid eyes on her. “Remember how good you have it, young man,” the older lady said to me, then she pointed to all the people outside, “There are many others who are not as fortunate.”

  This interaction woke something inside of me. I guess you could call it a deep compassion for those less fortunate than myself. I went back into our room and Brian was still sleeping. I wrote the story down in my journal, just as I’m retelling it to you right now.

  Later that day, I went back outside and gave Gita some more money and she was overcome with joy again. Brian was watching the entire thing this time, semi-perplexed. “You have a crush on this girl?”

  “She speaks to me without words,” I said. “She’s an angel of the streets. I want her to be okay.”

  “This is not like a baby cobra, Rob. You can’t smuggle her back in your pants.” Brian searched his pack for chocolate to give Gita, but he had given it all away. “Did you give her some money?” he asked.