I try to swallow. Feel my cheeks. In the morning, I tried to meditate. One of those methods where you feel your whole body, inch by inch. Move from toe to ankle to that part in the back, the lower leg, what’s it called? Damn. Start again.
And then you’re standing in front of the mirror and you’re crying. You taste the salt in the corner of your lips where it’s seeping in. Now your mouth is stupidly curled around and you can barely speak. The brave speeches you will make. You see your wife years later, buying grocery, having a glass of wine, on a balcony and looking into the bloody sky. Is she thinking of you? Or is she being fucked by . . . No. You grip the basin harder, everything is wet. You can’t see anymore because the world is melting in your eyes.
This can’t be happening to me, you think. Only it is. Or maybe you’re chosen. By whom? For what?
Our whole lives we try to build. But actually we are just falling apart.
Colosseo. 76 AD. Cause of ruin: moisture, humidity, earthquake in 1913.
Once maybe you were a child and you scored a home run and you thought life would always be beautiful. If you were in India, you scored the winning runs for your school team and felt the bat tingling in your hand while the ball exploded to the boundary. That was the sweetest sight in the world. But now you’re dying. I had spent a week in this beach called Palolem in Goa with a girl I used to know. We woke up and walked down the sand and through the villages, the sun warming our heads and the sound of the sea constantly in our ears. Once we woke up and I had the best prawn sandwich in the world. She was sitting with me and we were both lost. That might be the happiest moment of my life. Have you had a holiday like that? Or do you remember when you had slipped your hand under someone’s shirt and felt a breast as soft as a mango? Or down someone’s trousers to tame the one-eyed snake. No, I don’t really call it that.
Krantik. 1982. Cause of ruin: Tobacco, alcohol, keeping up.
I don’t have memories. A few, but I’m never sure. I like to think I don’t. But you, you can’t leave your husband behind. Because now you remember it all. You even remember what hasn’t happened yet. Not the children, can’t leave them either. Tommy’s sleeping in his room, curled into a ball. You can’t even look at him, because you might start blubbering and crash to the floor. And Kathy’s not married. Or Rani, or Ayu, I don’t know where you are. She’ll have a wedding photograph, between your husband and her groom; yes, it’s that nice boy who works in consulting. Next to your husband is a flower vase. That could have been you.
I don’t even have children. Don’t want them. But I could still miss them.
Pooja. 1983. Cause of ruin: little crucial bits coming undone inside her head. Whatever it is, it’s not about me.
I had a doctor’s appointment. I had to go. I walked past the Roman Forum. 800-100 BC. Sacked by Goths, shifting soil formations.
I saw this old lady, she had a permanent scowl on her face. I asked her the way. I said per favore. I’m always polite. When I started learning Italian, I learnt the polite words first: per favore, grazie. I could never figure out the people who learn the swear words in foreign languages and then laugh about them over their fourth beer. “Do you know what they call balls in Spanish? Have you heard the Vietnamese one about your grand-mom being a whore?” Fuck those dickheads. We need to be civil. If we’re not civil, we would just be apes with iPhones. And my per favore worked. She thought for a few seconds and then started explaining the route. The one I knew. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t rude. Just looked melancholic, in a permanent kind of way. I had read about an old lady in the coastal villages of Cinque Terre, up in the north. In the dead of winter, when Italians stayed home with wind in their throats or air in their stomachs or those too-specific ailments Italians are always suffering from, when it was that cold, she’d walk down the main road to the sea with her jacket wide open, the icy wind blowing her hair into a comet behind her. It would take a minute for each step, but she’d keep walking. All the way to the water. Thirty years ago, her husband had died at sea, dragged in by the biggest fish he had ever seen. And now the old lady would walk to the sea and throw meat into the water. Every evening. Prosciutto, sliced thin. Parma ham. Mortadella with little knobs of fat peppered all over. She was feeding her husband. If he wasn’t already dead, he’d probably have died of cholesterol. The sea feeder finished giving me directions; the scowl came back to her face.
I also saw a group of girls. Italian with puffed-up jackets; one was wearing beads that hung low across her cleavage. I didn’t stop them. It wasn’t about the girls. It wasn’t about sex. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked the old sea feeder. I would never sleep with her. I mean fuck her, or be fucked by her. Unless she was dying and wanted me to. I don’t think I could deny a dying person anything. I’m filled with Christian charity in that way. Maybe I should tell these girls I was dying, might be dying. There was a lump in my throat and it had a life of its own.
I needed to relax. There was no point getting worked up; I was going to a doctor anyway. I tried the walking meditation. Opening my chakras. If you embrace the universe, the universe will embrace you back.
There were flowers that looked like cherry blossoms on the edge of the road. The Japanese kind. Some had opened into little purple stains in the sky. Somewhere in Tokyo, Japanese kids must be photographing them. And then they go home and study for their exams. If they fail, they kill themselves by pushing pencils through their noses. The bridge of the nose breaks and pierces the brain. Instant death. The Japanese have it all figured out. Pooja’s obviously not Japanese.
When I walked into the doctor’s office, he had a huge chart behind him. Pieces of nose and throat stripped of their skin. A Rolling Stones mouth wide open with pretty white teeth. The doctor’s eyelids had rolls, they also had little warts on them. Maybe he had cancer too.
So, young man, what is the problem?
I have a sore throat.
Yes, this is the season. Everyone is getting a sore throat.
I’ve had it for a month. I think I have problems swallowing.
The weather has been crazy. Climate change. I’ll give you a cough syrup, that’ll sort everything out. What colour is the sputum? The spit?
I don’t know; I haven’t seen any. Could you check the inside?
He pressed my tongue down with a spoon and shoved a torch in. He asked me to make that stupid Aaaaeee sound.
Slightly red, but it’s okay. Try a salt-water gargle.
No, could you check again. I think there’s something in the throat. There could be a growth.
He smiled. It may have been a smirk. Bastard. And then he shoved a pipe with a light at the end down my throat. Nearly choked me; it felt like I was giving a blow job. A blow job to a giant steel robot. With a very thin dick. Maybe he was malnourished. Maybe he was dying; so I had to do it.
All is okay, he said.
I can’t feel my cheeks, I said.
Yes, it is cold.
Doctor. I spoke slowly; that’s when people take you seriously. I think there might be something wrong. It’s not normal to have a sore throat for a month. Also, I can feel some discomfort in my throat. And when I breathe.
Not normal, but it’s not abnormal. And this time, he definitely smirked.
He pulled out a thinner pipe and pushed it into a nostril. This may feel uncomfortable, but it’ll take only a minute. I started breathing in, breathing out. One nostril. A car with one headlight. What happened to Jakob Dylan? There was a mirror in the room; I saw him peering into my nostril.
This isn’t happening. An image of an image. Breathe in. Out. Yin and yang.
All is okay. I’ll give you something to gargle with. If it doesn’t improve in three days, I’ll also give you some antibiotics.
Maybe he’s right. Embrace the universe. This can’t be my story. I’m not even a minor celebrity.
When I left, they charged me for every pipe he pushed into me.
I should have gone back to the office. My boss wanted a proje
ct report. He asked me the previous week. The deadline is yesterday, he said. Chop chop. Markus; he was Swedish or Finnish or something. Flossed his teeth every day. Played tennis twice a week. Bowling on Wednesday evenings. The company can’t afford bottlenecks, he said. I’m trying to make you the sharp end of the machine. If you’re a bottleneck, we have to do something about it. Is that clear? He did a thumbs-up, his teeth blazed open at the same time. Maybe it was automatic. Smile, raise thumb. Chop chop. Floss. Tennis. Sharp end of the machine.
I hadn’t done anything about the report. He’d want my head on a file. Go to his bowling club with his fingers stuck in my ears. Perfect Ten.
Maybe I should go back to the office. But I was on sick leave. And it was the beginning of the rest of my life. I had just survived throat cancer, the possibility of throat cancer.
We are surviving possibilities all the time. The possibility of being mauled alive by a Chinese panda. Of being roasted on a spit and cannibalised by an Elton John-worshipping cult. In the middle of Manhattan. Things happen.
But I had survived a distinct possibility of impending death. That does not happen all the time. So fuck Markus. I was taking the day off. The Colosseo was crumbling. And some day it will fall. Markus was flossing every day.
I was alive. With my chakras opening into purple blossoms that had the universe in the middle of each ring of petals, the earth with a billion hungry people in the middle of the universe, little cancerous cells growing in the middle of their bodies and either the cells would get them or death would. There was no escape. I was getting morbid again. So I stopped thinking. Maybe it was the steroids up my ass.
No, I wasn’t a drug mule, or a Nicaraguan drug-sex-slave. I had haemorrhoids. Piles. The first time it happened, it felt like a bolt of lightning running through my body, upside down. I went to the doctor and he said it was only a pain in the ass.
You mean I just get it from sitting on my ass?
And you get it from your lifestyle, these modern times. This was in India. He loved talking about the glory days of our country: between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. No one had haemorrhoids back then. And we invented the zero.
You have a sedentary lifestyle with dietary and lifestyle excesses. Dip your bottom in warm water every two hours.
We had gunpowder in India before the Chinese: did you know that? Don’t sit up too long. The pressure from your body settles on the sphincter, he said. What the fuck is the sphincter?
What about some ointment? That’s how I got the steroid prescription the first time. Numbs the nerves in the ass. I googled it: Ben Johnson used some variant to win his race.
So Piles and I spent the weekend together. I watched TV sideways from the couch. The doctors on TV had found some girl with four legs and four arms. They had to operate on her. They named her Lakshmi: multi-limbed goddess of wealth. And some white guy had won a Bollywood dance contest. Everyone claimed it was unfair, what would he know about Bollywood? But he had learnt his steps from Farah Khan, the goddess of hip thrusting. She was just four-limbed. I drank two litres of juice. Had to piss all the time. Missed the pot a lot—I was hobbling because of the ass. So I started using the juice bottles on the couch. The empty juice bottles.
Things got better. They always do. First they happen; then they get better. Things would get better for Markus too. As long as he kept flossing. What he didn’t know was—floss enough times and you will certainly end up dead. Flossing till the end of his life was the surest way of meeting death. It would get better for Pooja too. She’d meet some guy her parents found for her. They’d have sex. Only missionary style. She’d scream, but not too loudly, because then what kind of woman would her husband think she was. And she’d want him to go down, but of course she would never tell him. He had such a perfect life with his corner office in the bank and his ties with solid lines and the one with the ethnic patterns that he’d wear on Fridays. How could he go down with a tie like that? Maybe he’d want to go down as well; but then how could he say so to a nice girl like that. And they’d have kids—three, the two girls and then the boy because they didn’t stop trying till the boy came—and foreign trips. Going up the Eiffel Tower. Taking the elevator down. Just when it has its first ever accident and they freefall for ten seconds when their faces are frozen in the horror of realising that all of it meant nothing and then they’d end up dead in a soup of twisted metal with one rod spiked through his ethnic pattern. On his scarf, he wouldn’t be wearing a tie on holiday, but he got a scarf with ethnic patterns too. Okay, I didn’t wish that last part: the part about the lift, not the scarf. I didn’t wish her ill. I was the greater person.
Anyway, the ass got better. But I got the steroids to Rome. If I feel a little sore, I just stuff some up my ass. It wasn’t very comfortable walking with the steroids squishing inside me. So I waited for the bus. And of course it didn’t come. In Rome, the bus always comes later than you expect. I should prepare a survival guide for the transport in Rome. I’d even send it to Pooja and her future-solid-tie-husband. How to survive the transport in Rome. The bus always takes longer than you expect. Always. If you plan for the delay, the bus driver will know telepathically, arrive with further delay and still ruin your postponed plans.
I climbed down to the metro. Which was also late. Obviously. The metro takes longer than you expect. If it arrives on time, the metro driver will know your plans telepathically and will stop the metro in between stops for undefined reasons. Your postponed plans will still be ruined. The metro really took my trip.
I didn’t have plans. But they were still ruined. Then the old man seated next to me on the bench started talking. I couldn’t understand a word. He spoke fast in Italian and swallowed the end of every word. I kept saying davvero. Sure, sure. You never know what these old people go on about. Probably ranting about how things never work. Or about kids nowadays. People talk all the time in Rome, which is annoying. Maybe it’s good for the community. If you take the train to another city, the old couple next to you will ask your name. They will also ask about your job, your income, your rent and why you missed your cousin’s wedding. This is not an intrusion. This is part of building a community. Also, if you’re on the metro, you’ll have the person next to you read your book over your shoulder. Reciprocity is assured. When the girl next to you is breaking up, you can read her text messages. This is not an intrusion. This is the free flow of knowledge. Also, it means you can look at her boobs and pretend you’re just reading her messages.
Maybe the old guy, the word-swallower, was trying to seduce me. Who knows with these old people? Maybe he was a priest. I wasn’t much older than a kid myself. No, I shouldn’t judge people. We hear all kinds of shit about everyone. One can’t believe most of that. But the bit about priests getting off on kids is probably true. The word-eater leaned in and said something with a cackle. Spit looped out from between his missing teeth. I said davvero once more and walked away.
I didn’t have anywhere to go. So I asked a guy. Ciao. Colosseo? A shrug of the shoulders: rejection. I could see the monument in the distance, so obviously he knew. Maybe he didn’t want to talk. He was gnawing on his lower lip and looking away. Maybe he’d been caught fucking his neighbour’s wife. Or his neighbour’s dog. In which case, he probably didn’t have much to say. Or maybe he was a priest in a leather jacket.
But I didn’t have to worry about him. I had cherry blossoms and opening chakras and Massimo and a stash of weed at home. I even had the Colosseo. Maybe I’d take a few photographs. I walked away from the metro. Sometimes walking is the best thing you could do in Rome—the whole place might be falling apart but it’s happening with such unbearable grace. This city has been around forever. And there have always been ruins. Here, people are used to the beauty of things falling apart. I shouldn’t take it for granted. It might be a toilet bowl, but it is one fit for Winona Ryder. Even for Morgan Freeman.
Maybe God doesn’t look like either of them. We humans have been around for what, a couple o
f million years? But the cockroaches—I remember reading, I read a lot—have been in pretty much the same shape for over a hundred million years. As ugly, scurrying around and even flying into our faces in summer, being crushed into red veins and white goo under dinosaur feet. But they’ve made it this far. There must be a reason. It’s probably because God is not Jesus with his Jim Morrison beard and Kurt Cobain eyes and God is not Invisible Man Allah who was too shy to be painted or photographed and God is not Vishnu with his Smurf-blue face as handsome as that TV actor—no one remembers his name now—dancing on the ten-hooded serpent. God was the cockroach in the kitchen when the last supper was being prepared. I didn’t have to worry. I was okay as long as I didn’t use the Doom spray in the kitchen too often.
I shouldn’t blaspheme, I thought. I didn’t want lightning to strike me down on a clear day like this. The steroids in my ass could be a conductor. I should check—that could be really dangerous.
Then I saw the girl: she was leaning against the door of the gelato place near the bus stop. She held a cigarette in her left hand, the whole hand was closed around the filter and the cigarette was pointing away, as if she had a burning claw. Behind her, faces were pasted on the gelato counter while the server scooped into cups in a row: mandorle, pistachio, fior di latte, cannella con cioccolato. I looked at the flavours. And I saw her looking at me. I was normally like the cockroach God, too small and insignificant till you step on me and I spill my mess all over your floor. I’m usually that insignificant. But she was looking at me. So I asked her.
Excuse me, I said in English. She raised one eyebrow into a question. Only one. While the other eyebrow didn’t move. I had never seen anyone do that: it was like a miracle.
I wanted to pose a difficult question, one that would take some time. Do you know the way to Gianicolo?
She stubbed her cigarette in the gelato in her right hand and I could smell the puff of tiramisu gelato smoke. Okay, she said.
No Direction Rome Page 2