News from Gardenia

by Robert Llewellyn

  I then saw something moving. I strained my eyes to try and make out what it was; it certainly looked as if it was nearer than the planet’s surface. Before long I could see it was another pod coming up the tether. I craned my neck to try and see the tether station, but we seemed to be turning. Just before it went out of my view I watched the pod slow down, stop and release from the tether. Moments later it seemed to shoot off at a speed that defied the eye.

  Being now a very seasoned pod traveller I decided I understood exactly what was going on. In fact the pod wasn’t truly moving, it was the earth that was shifting through space, we had effectively remained motionless in space while the earth and the tether stations turned beneath us at many tens of thousands of miles an hour. Hence the incredible speed of travel and the incredibly low amount of energy needed to attain this remarkable feat.

  The pod I was in had now turned and I did feel a slight jolt as the pod locked onto the tether. I then had a very different view of India. We were still just high enough for me to be able to see both coasts, the great brown expanse of the subcontinent stretched before me. I could make out no details of the land save the beautiful traces of clouds above the surface.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder; it was Rashmi. ‘I have to return you now, Mr Meckler,’ she said softly.

  ‘I can never thank you enough for allowing me to see that. It was an incredible experience,’ I said. Rashmi smiled at me. She was incalculably beautiful and I was once again hopelessly in love. As she gently guided me back to my travel position I stared at her face.

  ‘You are without doubt the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,’ I heard myself say.

  Rashmi glanced at me and smiled; it was a glance I will never forget. She said nothing, just placed me back in my position and as she turned to float away, she brushed my forehead with her hand with such gentle care I felt a sob develop in my throat. I was so happy and relaxed it was ridiculous.

  Once again I must have dozed off as we descended, as I recall little of the growing feeling of heaviness as we approached the ground.

  I awoke when we jolted a little at the bottom of the tether. I watched Rashmi move along the passage, releasing her cargo of sleepy passengers.

  I had now become more familiar with the feeling of being released from the elastic body corset I had been bound in for all of twenty minutes. I shook myself a little and walked a little unsteadily out of the pod.

  What greeted me was heat, light and utter chaos. When I stepped out of the pod terminal, a beautiful glass and possibly aluminium structure, I realised it was next to the old Churchgate railway station in the centre of Mumbai.

  I was in a square or open space before the old building that reminded me of a cross between St Pancras station in London and the Taj Mahal. It was a massive Victorian building, but now housed under a vast modern structure, so tall I felt dizzy looking up at it. I also felt unsafe looking up as I was immediately surrounded by literally thousands of people, the majority without doubt Indian, but there were so many races present it was impossible to know where you were or where all these people came from.

  One thing was obvious though: the seething mass of people were not poor. I had been in India before – a quick mental calculation told me two hundred and ten years before – although never in Mumbai, but my overriding memory had been of abject poverty and incredible guilt on my part. I stayed in swish hotels and had money to hire taxis. Everywhere I looked back in the twenty-first century I’d seen terrible human misery and poverty.

  All I could see in the twenty-third century were affluent people: happy, tall, slim, well-fed, healthy people, seemingly millions of them – a sea of incredible movement and activity all around.

  ‘Mr Meckler,’ said a man who suddenly appeared in front of me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  The man shook my hand with vigour. ‘I am Palash. I am so happy to meet you.’

  ‘Did you get a message from Gardenia too?’ I said. His grin was infectious and I felt myself grinning back.

  ‘Indeed I did, Mr Meckler. A lovely message from a very nice man called William. He clearly holds you in very high regard and it is a great honour to meet you.’

  I was still feeling fairly dizzy and disoriented and remembered I hadn’t recently drunk the juice I still had in my small bag.

  I extracted it and drank a little; there wasn’t much left. I felt its goodness surge through me and immediately felt more grounded.

  ‘I’m not used to pod travel,’ I said.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, you never get used to it. You must be very tired but I imagine not that hungry.’

  I smiled. ‘No, I’m really not hungry, I’ve just eaten in Beijing.’

  ‘Did you meet Mei?’ asked Palash.

  I laughed again. ‘Yes, do you know her?’

  ‘Of course, she is a distant cousin on my mother’s side,’ said Palash; he almost sounded offended.

  I hung my head in shame.

  ‘Please forgive me,’ I said. ‘I knew she is your cousin. I’m a little overwhelmed by this experience, and this heat.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, you are from freezing cold Gardenia, let us retire to a watering hole and you can cool off a little.’

  I walked with Palash, who took great care of me. We turned a corner and I was greeted with a spectacle of yet more people, no traffic, just what seemed like teeming millions of people on foot.

  ‘This is Veer Nariman Road,’ said Palash. ‘It’s a very old road, it dates back to when the Gardenians ruled this place. So funny.’

  I smiled, I wasn’t sure what to say. British colonialism pre-dated even me but clearly Palash felt it was relevant.

  Although there was no traffic on the Veer Nariman Road it was anything but quiet. Apart from the laughing, talking and shouting going on all around us there was music everywhere. I couldn’t see a source but the quality of the sound was extraordinary – it was as if there was an Indian music group right beside me.

  Palash guided me toward a large building. I say large – I cannot describe it in terms that make sense to me, probably thousands of metres high and with a footprint that must have covered many acres. It was truly massive, maybe not quite as big as the building I visited in Beijing, but clearly of a similar construction.

  Once inside we were blessed with cooler air but no fewer people. We used an escalator to go to the third floor and we were soon standing in front of a wonderful recreation of a roadside eating establishment. There was an overabundance of intense decoration, bunting, flags and old wooden-wheeled handcarts covered in exotic-looking brass containers. Everywhere there were intense colours and fantastic smells of food.

  ‘We can just have a cool lassi or maybe a beer. Would you like a beer?’ said Palash.

  ‘Maybe just some tea,’ I said.

  Palash entered the establishment and started talking to a man in an elaborate and oversized turban. As I got closer I realised that the man’s head was also a little oversized, this was followed by the dizzying realisation that the man wasn’t a man, it was some kind of creature.

  Palash turned and saw my state of shock.

  ‘Oh, you have never seen a chai wallah before, please do not be alarmed, he’s very kind and helpful.’

  I was staring at the chai wallah trying to understand what was before me. The grin was too wide, almost comic book in its exaggeration and when it spoke, the head bobbed from side to side in a way no human could possibly achieve.

  ‘Good afternoon, Palash, how is your family, the little one is well?’

  ‘She’s fine thank you.’

  ‘Happy times, and will you be eating with us today?’

  ‘Just a refreshing drink I think,’ said Palash without hesitation, even though he was talking to a machine.

  ‘Please to follow me, sirs,’ it said in c
omical Indian English. The body of the machine spun around on its axis but the almost ridiculous grinning face was still staring right at us. Its head bobbed from side to side as it moved swiftly through the many hundreds of seated occupants of the eatery. The noise and activity were dizzying all around me; I was desperately trying to soak it all up.

  I noticed that the chai wallah machine had arms – not just two, more like ten – and they were busy picking things up and moving people out of the way as the machine moved along, but with the most delicate movements. This machine was supremely aware of its working environment.

  ‘First time in Mumbai, Mister Gavin sir?’ asked the machine, its head looming toward me.

  ‘Y–yes, it is,’ I stuttered. For a moment I pondered how it knew my name but then decided such a query was too mundane to even consider. Obviously the machines in the world, the grid, the pods, the entire place was fully aware of everything and everyone and no one seemed to mind. I wasn’t carrying any form of identity that I knew of, no one had inserted a chip in my neck or squirted special ink on me.

  ‘Happy times,’ said the bizarre contraption. ‘Please be seated.’

  A collection of the many arms joined to the side of the vaguely humanoid and highly decorated box that served as the machine’s curvaceous body made a very gracious and naturalistic sweep indicating a low wooden-looking bench at the end of a long table.

  ‘A sweet Lassi for me and a sweet Gardenian tea for my friend please,’ said Palash.

  ‘Coming right up, Mister Palash sir.’

  The machine turned and moved back through the milling crowds in the eatery, its bizarre multiple arms gently alerting people to its presence.

  I spent a moment trying to relax and take in my surroundings. Although the place I was sitting in was decorated to look like an old-style Indian roadside eatery, it had something of the fifties American diner recreated in a modern shopping mall about it. It looked very realistic but it was all too perfect. The building it was in was massive; the air-conditioning system could be seen beyond the endless fronds of banners and bunting hanging from the roof.

  The establishment was truly on an industrial scale. It was obviously capable of feeding hundreds of people at a time. It also became apparent as I soaked up the mass of information around me that my plastic waiter was not alone – there were numerous bizarre figures like him helping people, moving through the place with trays held by their multiple arms. Each of them had a very different face. Some had turbans, others simple white hats, and one, for reasons I was never to learn, had a classic cowboy Stetson on his head and a polka dot neckerchief around his flexible neck.

  ‘So tell me, Gavin, how do you like podding?’ Palash asked as he sat opposite me.

  ‘It’s, well, it’s quite incredible, I can’t believe that just a few moments ago I was looking at more or less the entire Indian sub-continent.’

  ‘Oh, you dared look out of a window. Brave man, very brave,’ said Palash. ‘You would not catch me doing that in a month of Sundays. I am out like a log for the whole trip.’

  ‘I can imagine that if you did it regularly, that would be the best option,’ I said. ‘I do feel pretty weary now.’

  ‘Oh, you are so much the weary traveller. As soon as I saw you I thought to myself, I know that feeling. Have you done multi-pods today?’

  I grinned. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Oh, I have a knack,’ said Palash. ‘I can almost smell podshock.’

  ‘Podshock, is that what you call it?’

  Suddenly a stainless steel mug of tea was placed before me at such speed I have no idea how it didn’t spill. At precisely the same time another stainless steel cup of lassi was placed in front of Palash.

  ‘Enjoy,’ said the chai wallah, who immediately spun around and moved off again.

  ‘Amazing,’ I said, grinning like a fool. ‘What a cool machine.’

  ‘Interesting you refer to the chai wallah as a machine,’ said Palash. ‘I suppose he is, but I think of him as a person.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘How intelligent is he?’

  ‘Intelligent, I couldn’t say,’ said Palash, ‘but he will remember you, if you don’t come back for fifty years and then drop in, he will welcome you again as if you came here every day.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said again. ‘You’ll have to forgive me Palash, this is all so much more than I can take in. But while I’m here, tell me about yourself and this incredible city and India? Assume I am a complete ignoramus, which I am.’

  Palash laughed richly. ‘I can also tell you are a very intelligent man sir, far from an ignoramus. I can certainly tell you all about my country, but then I fear you would be here for a year or two – there is so much to tell. Maybe narrow down your desires to one or two areas and I’m sure I can furnish you with any information you wish.’

  ‘Anything would be good. I have lived a very sheltered life in Gardenia. This is my first trip around the world.’

  ‘Okay, Gavin. Well, I am Palash, I am married to a wonderful woman called Manisha and we have one lovely child, a girl called Semina.’

  ‘Oh, like your Grandmother,’ I said. Palash froze, the cup of Lassi just below his lips.

  ‘You know about my Grandmother?’ he asked.

  I realised my mistake immediately and didn’t know how to get out of it without offending him, but on my trip I had learned that truth is usually the best option.

  ‘I’m an anomalee,’ I said. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Goodness me! Yes, it does. Oh bless my footwear, how wonderful,’ Palash covered his mouth with his hand and stared at me for some time. Eventually he said: ‘How long have you been with us here?’

  ‘Only a few weeks, hence my confusion.’

  ‘Of course, you poor man, it must be a terrible shock for you. Tell me, what era did you come from?’

  ‘Well, I left in 2011. I’m trying to get used to it. But tell me this Palash, you’ve heard of other anomalees?’

  ‘Well yes, it does seem to happen from time to time. I fear there are some who claim to be so but are really just putting on an act to receive more love and affection. I am assuming this is not the case with you.’

  ‘No, very much not,’ I said. ‘I wish it were, then I would be more used to the world I now see.’

  ‘But why did you wish to meet me?’ asked Palash, his grin still enormous. ‘Do we have a family connection?’

  ‘No, well, not really, sort of,’ I said. ‘I knew your great, great grandmother, a woman called Beth Harris, an Englishwoman.’

  ‘Englishwoman,’ said Palash, carefully mimicking my pronunciation. It was clear he’d never heard the term before. ‘What does that mean please?’

  ‘Sorry, I mean Gardenian, she lived in Gardenia when it was still called England.’

  ‘I am already learning far more than I expected, and you knew my great, great granny. That is wonderful!’ said Palash, and he leant over the table and embraced me – it was a bit awkward, I was worried we were going to spill our drinks.

  He sat back down again, a huge smile on his face. ‘No wonder William, your friend from Goldacre Hall, no wonder he said I would enjoy meeting you. How exciting, tell me, Gavin, what was my great, great granny like?’

  ‘Oh, she was, well, a wonderful, kind woman. We were once married but then I left and came through a cloud thing.’

  ‘You were married to my great, great granny! This is more extraordinary, but does this not make you my great, great granddad?’

  ‘No, we never had children, but after I left she married a very good friend of mine, they had two children, one was your great grandfather Rupert.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Palash. ‘I can just remember him, a funny old man with no hair and no teeth, but a charming fellow. He lived here.’

 
‘In Mumbai?’

  ‘Yes indeed. My family has been here for generations, but great granddad did indeed come from Gardenia. How utterly extraordinary.’

  We sat staring at each other for a while. I was yet again looking for some kind of genetic trace of Beth but I couldn’t see it.

  ‘You knew my great great granny. I still can’t believe it. So did you follow the family tree?’

  ‘Yes, it was fascinating, well, it was kind of disturbing to study a history that should have happened after you were dead. It does your head in.’

  ‘I think I can understand what you mean, your turn of phrase is very interesting. I suppose it would have been more confusing had you been my great great grandfather, that would quite do your head in, especially as I am older than you.’

  A huge grin spread across Palash’s face.

  ‘So, tell me, Gavin, did you ever visit India way back in 2011?’

  ‘I did come here once, and let me tell you, Palash, it’s unrecognisable. Everyone seems very affluent now, very well fed and clean.’

  ‘I have read of our history and indeed I would imagine it is a very different country now. Like everywhere else our population is dropping which has all kinds of consequences. Not all bad but it does change things.’

  ‘It still seems like quite a crowded place,’ I said glancing around the packed eatery.

  ‘Oh, certainly Mumbai is a very big city, not something you Gardenians are used to, but, if you have been in Beijing, I suppose you have seen what a big city can be like. How long were you in Beijing?’

  ‘About two hours,’ I said sipping my sweet tea.

  ‘Two hours, yes, long enough. I am not a fan of Beijing. Hong Kong on the other hand, now that is a great city – of course it is: it’s full of Indians.’

  ‘I don’t understand how this place can function, how so many people can live so close together and not grow food.’

  Again Palash smiled and looked at me in a way I can only describe as patronising, but not in a way I could take offence at.