by Kim Dinan
That evening the three of us had dinner on the café balcony overlooking the Ghats of the Ahar River. The haunting sound of bells rang out into the nighttime air. While sipping chai I amazed over how long the day felt. The rickshaw accident had just happened that morning, but it felt like a week ago. It was always the phenomenon when you lived a day good and well, I thought. You were rewarded with more time, or so it seemed.
Lesley leaned across the table and asked about Brian. “I miss him,” I told her. “But I have no idea if he misses me. I wish I could know what he is thinking. It’s terrible wondering if he’s happier without me.”
Lesley and Sarah knew about my problems with Brian. On our second day in the rickshaw, feeling an intense desire to be untethered, I’d removed my wedding ring. My ring represented my life with Brian, and I needed to know how it would feel to be without its symbolic presence. Lesley and Sarah probably would not have noticed its absence, but I felt it profoundly, so I’d briefly filled them in.
It was so refreshing to speak honestly about my troubles with Brian. Until recently, I’d been afraid that if I admitted them to anyone other than Wendy they’d feel too big and real. But the opposite had happened. The more I talked about the struggles between Brian and me, the less insurmountable the problems seemed. Lesley patted my hand reassuringly. “I’m sure he misses you, honey. You guys just needed a little room to breathe.”
On our way out of the café, the owner stopped us. “Where will you park your rickshaw?” he asked. We’d been avoiding the question all day. Every place we’d slept so far had parking lots, or something like them, but tonight our only option appeared to be leaving Sunny unattended in the middle of the busy alleyway. We’d hauled our bags and our tubs of gasoline up to our room but it was Sunny herself that we worried about. If we left her unprotected on the road the odds were good that she’d be gone by morning.
The café owner pointed to his houseboy, who had been running dishes to and from the kitchen since we’d arrived many hours ago. Now that the café was closed, the boy pulled a dirty sleeping mat to the front of the shop near the door to watch over things for the night.
“You pay me three hundred rupees, and my boy will watch your rickshaw tonight,” he said. We had no other option. Lesley dug into our collective pot of money and paid him. Then we climbed the stairs to our guesthouse and collapsed into bed.
We woke the next morning before dawn and wandered out into the cold, dark day. A call to prayer echoed out over the river. Sunny sat untouched where we had left her.
When we approached the rickshaw we found the houseboy asleep on the floor of our rickshaw, curled like a cat into an impossibly tiny ball. He wore pants and short sleeves and was without even a blanket to keep him warm. My assumption had been that he would come out periodically to check on things, not spend the whole night outside guarding Sunny.
I did not understand then, and I still don’t now, the complexities of poverty in India. But I had heard that there were tens of thousands of street children illegally employed by hotels and restaurants all over the country. Oftentimes, these children were exploited, treated as virtual prisoners, mistreated physically and emotionally by their employers. If that was the case with this boy I do not know, and I will never know.
Rousing the boy awake, I whispered above him, and small clouds of condensation puffed from my lips. He sat up with a start, a metal pole clutched in his hand for protection.
“We are leaving,” I whispered into the silence of the morning.
Remembering the old man in the police station the day before, I knew my thank you had not been enough. I would not miss out on another opportunity to give.
My backpack still hung from my shoulders. Lowering it to the ground, I pulled out the yellow envelope money. My fingers counted the bills and then I pushed them into the boy’s hand.
“For you,” I said. My index finger poked gently into his skinny chest. “You. Yours. Thank you.” He nodded, and a half-moon smile spread across his face.
We hoisted our backpacks on top of the rickshaw and covered them with a plastic tarp to keep the dust out. Then we secured them with bungee cords to keep the bags in place. Sarah sat behind the wheel and turned the ignition. The sun began to drain the darkness from the sky.
We wrapped our scarves around our necks to fight the chill of the morning and drove Sunny away from Udaipur, pointing southbound to that distant finish line in Kerala, still over one thousand miles away.
Chapter 11
We took turns driving in one-hour shifts, the maximum length of time we deemed tolerable before the stress shot our nerves completely. Poor Sarah was stuck behind the wheel as we navigated the terrible traffic of Ahmedabad. She sat stark straight, trying not to stall in the stop-and-go chaos as cars and buses and motorbikes whizzed by us in all directions. From the back of the rickshaw I noticed tears running down her cheeks. Leaning forward, I squeezed her arm for comfort but knew there was nothing I could say. The stress of driving on crazy Indian roads had pushed all three of us to our limits. When I hit my breaking point I cussed. Lesley detached. Sarah cried.
We were driving through Gujarat, an industrial state that we’d been warned to avoid altogether. But we didn’t have the luxury of avoiding Gujarat because we were behind schedule, and we couldn’t afford to pay the hefty fee if we returned our rickshaw late.
The beauty and magic of the first few days of the Rickshaw Run felt like a distant dream. We’d been driving for more than a week, and the novelty of navigating India in a rickshaw had not retained its charm. In Gujarat we saw a different side of India. It was dirty and ugly, and the level of poverty was profound; everywhere people and animals suffered.
We drove past people living on the side of the highway in shanties made from tarps and branches. In a rural village I saw a girl, aged about twelve, skeleton-skinny and working naked in a field. There was garbage everywhere. Cows and goats, their ribs as bowed as cathedral arcs, stood on the roadside chewing plastic wrap and chip bags.
As we drove down a crowded highway, we saw a starving dog standing over the bloated corpse of another dog, eating it. Later, I saw a dog heaving and bleeding on the side of the road, heartbreakingly close to death. Actually, the dead dogs were everywhere. We passed too many to count.
Our collective mood darkened. Each time we ran out of gas, broke down, or got a flat tire, I had to suppress my urge to kick the ever-loving shit out of the rickshaw. I knew exactly where I wanted to kick her, too, right in that mockingly perky orange posterior door.
Many miles passed as I contemplated my years with Brian, and many more passed while I sat suspended in a kind of unthinking awareness, staring out of the rickshaw and dreading my next turn to drive.
India was taking her toll on me. In the mornings, when many Indians burned their garbage, the pollution became so thick and invasive that the caustic smell of scorched plastic burned my throat. I’d developed a hacking cough from our twelve-hour days in the rickshaw.
We’d been subsisting on pineapple and Parle-G biscuits, India’s ubiquitous best-selling cookie, and I hadn’t pooped in nine days. I felt like hell, but I also felt guilty for my minor and temporary suffering. There were so many people in India just trying to survive, who lived every day with no escape from the discomforts that were temporary and fleeting to me.
And yet the beautiful color of the women’s saris as they trudged down the roads carrying pots of water on their heads cut through the bleakness. The waving children and the manic motorcycle drivers who’d weave in and out of traffic, pull up so close they could touch us, and yell, “HELLO! WHERE YOU FROM? WHAT COUNTRYYY?” almost made me blind to the hardships of the people I encountered. Many suffered, yet they seemed happy and open and available in a way that I had never been. Before arriving I thought I understood the way things worked, but India was pulverizing all of that. Each molecule of my body felt like it had evaporated in a gra
nd and transcendent explosion, and I could no longer make sense of the world.
We were twenty miles outside of Pune, another huge industrial city we were dreading driving through, when a Café Coffee Day appeared out of nowhere like a mirage. At first I barely believed it but Lesley yelled “Oh my God, a Café Coffee Day!” Then Sarah shrieked and made a spontaneous turn into the parking lot, almost sideswiping a truck.
Café Coffee Day was India’s version of Starbucks. It had air conditioning and served machine made lattes and individually wrapped sandwiches that were displayed on glass platters. A Western toilet glistened in the bathroom. Fighting off the urge to drop to my knees and kiss the ground at Café Coffee Day, I locked myself in the women’s room and turned the hot water on, filled my cupped hands and splashed my wind burned face.
As I studied my left ring finger in the steam of the sink, I pumped soap into my hands and tried to scrub away the grime that had settled on my skin and underneath my fingernails. It felt good to have an unmarked hand, no ring to claim me. I could keep it this way, I thought, and the idea simply sat there like a waiting dog as the water swirled black down the drain.
From the interior of my backpack I pulled out a roll of toilet paper and dried my skin, then leaned forward and looked into the mirror. A thick layer of dirt and pollution had settled on my face. Leaning closer, an inch from the mirror, I stared hard into my own eyes. They looked bluer against the tone of my skin. “Hi,” I whispered, and my breath fogged against the glass. Raising my index finger, I tapped my reflection in the mirror. “Hi.” My eyes stared back at me, unblinking. I felt silly. What the hell was I doing talking to myself in a bathroom mirror? Stepping back, I stared at the bust of my reflection and the smile curled on my lips.
A weird thing had happened to me earlier in the rickshaw. While staring at the landscape as we bumped down a rural road, I’d fallen into a trance-like state. My mind was far off and wandering when I had a dream-like vision of Brian and I standing across from each other in a field. From across the bending grass I yelled to him. He waved and yelled back, but when he opened his mouth to speak my voice had come out.
Suddenly, all of my beloveds were standing in the field. My sisters, Wendy, and even me as a young girl, dressed in a navy blue dress I’d once worn. When I saw child-me I ran toward her, picked her up, and told her that I loved her. And somewhere deep inside of me some truth clicked into place. I was still that little girl, lovable and loved, worthy of the bounty of the world.
One by one I ran toward each person in the field and embraced them. But when I got to Brian I wasn’t sure if I should run to him. My body froze, unsure of what to do. And then a truth washed over me. I did not have to run toward him if I did not want to. The choice was mine. And suddenly, empowered with that choice, I realized that I did want to. As I reached his arms, I knew that I had made the right decision.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, cleaner than I’d been in days, I found Lesley and Sarah huddled at a table with a collection of cups, sandwiches, and cakes spread out around them. “We bought everything,” said Sarah.
“I can see that.” Sliding down into a plastic chair, I picked up a piece of iced cake and shoved it into my mouth. “Oh my God,” I moaned, “this is so much better than those stupid Parle-G biscuits.” I turned to face them both. “Let’s just sleep here tonight, at the Café Coffee Day. We’ll stay until they close and then we can sleep on the patio. Or maybe they’ll let us sleep under one of those.” I pointed to a row of pristine booths lined like perfect white teeth against the wall. “Either way, I don’t want to leave.”
“Neither do I,” said Lesley. We fell into silence, stuffing our faces with baked goods and washing it all down with chai.
In the parking lot, the staff of the Café Coffee Day had gathered around our rickshaw. They were snapping pictures with their cell phones. One of them approached us. “Is this your rickshaw?” he asked.
I nodded. “Sort of. I mean…yes. For now. We’re driving it to Kerala. We started in Jaisalmer.”
The boy’s eyes grew wide. “Noooo,” he let out a long moan. “How is this possible? You are crazy!” he exclaimed, wobbling his head.
Returning his smile, I wobbled my head back at him. “Tell me about it!”
An hour later I reluctantly sat down in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. Sunny sputtered to life and then made a terrible sound like a weak cough and died. I turned to look at Lesley and Sarah, who were getting situated in the back seat.
“That did not sound good,” I muttered as I cranked the ignition again. The rickshaw barked weakly to life and then sputtered out.
“Maybe she just needs some rest?” suggested Lesley. My eyes caught Sarah’s in the rearview mirror and she shrugged. Our rickshaw had already been resting for an hour. But I loved Café Coffee Day so much that I just let myself believe the lie. We walked back in and ordered another round of drinks. The sun was setting. We didn’t even talk about what to do.
A wealthy family pulled into the parking lot and climbed out of their SUV. They looked amusingly from the rickshaw to the three of us slumped around our coffees. The father called out to us. “Is this your rickshaw?”
We nodded in unison. “It’s broken,” Lesley said.
“Oh, that’s too bad. What is the matter with it?”
“We don’t have any idea.”
The family quizzed us. What were we doing in India? Why were we driving a rickshaw? Where had we started, and where were we going, and what did we do when we were not risking our lives navigating the subcontinent in a bright-orange, busted-down rickshaw?
They called us over and took our picture, and then they wished us luck. “Where will you sleep tonight?” the mother inquired.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She looked toward her husband who looked at the ground. They wanted to help us, but something held them back. Silently I envisioned their big house with plenty of spare room, their bathroom with hot water, and how nice it would be to have a safe place to sleep for the night. I thought of the man whose shack we had slept in. He did not have much, but he gave what he had, freely and openly and without, it seemed, even a moment’s hesitation.
Yet I understood the dilemma that played out in the minds of the family as they stood in the parking lot wondering if they should help us; it was the same internal debate that stopped Brian and me from giving yellow envelope money when we knew we should. Even before traveling, I’d been in a similar position half a dozen times over the years back home. What had stopped me from helping in those situations? Had I worried about being taken advantage of or of opening myself up to some sort of danger? Was I overscheduled and simply did not have the time? Or had I never truly learned that in order to make it in this world we needed to be able to rely on each other?
A few other customers had come out to the parking lot to take photos of us, and the rich family used the distraction to bid their farewells.
“Good luck,” said the woman as she climbed back into her SUV. “I hope it all works out for you.”
Overhearing our discussion, a young, college-aged man offered to take a look at Sunny for us. He fiddled around with the spark plugs for a moment and then asked, “Do you need a mechanic? My friend is a mechanic.”
We really needed a mechanic. It was getting late, the daylight nearly gone, and we were stranded.
“Probably,” I said, feeling ambivalent about our predicament.
“I’ll pick up my friend and bring him here,” said the man. He climbed on his motorcycle and headed off in the direction that we were supposed to be moving in. We sat down once again and waited for the mechanic to return.
A man in his early thirties emerged from the shop clutching a coffee and struck up conversation with us. He wanted to know what we were up to but, more importantly, he wanted us to know what he was up to. He was self-employed and driving to K
hadki for business, he told us. He read a self-help finance book that he kept face up so that we could see the title. He asked about the broken rickshaw.
“It happens all the time,” I muttered. “The good news is that every time we break down someone comes along to help us.”
He looked disgusted and leaned across the table to scold me. “It has been your luck, but you should not depend on luck.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned away to ignore him.
But he insisted that I know the number to the police department and how to change a spark plug. (Okay, he had me there.) He squinted his eyes into a scowl as he told me that I should know people in every city that we were driving through so that I’d have someone to call when I got myself into trouble.
An uncomfortable feeling scratched inside my chest. He was so mistrusting. We’d been relying on the kindness of strangers for days, and not one of them had done us wrong. This guy acted as though we ought to be dead by now. He was so paranoid that I felt my own paranoia creep up my spine and settle tightly on my shoulders.
But just then, as if to disprove him, the young man returned on his motorcycle with his friend, the mechanic, seated on back.
“Hey, look,” I said smugly.
The mechanic fiddled around in Sunny’s bowels and reported that her gasket had blown. In order to get her running again we’d need a new part. But due to the hour most of the shops were now closed.
I turned to Sarah and Lesley. “I guess we’re sleeping at Café Coffee Day after all.”
But the mechanic insisted that he might be able to track down the part that we needed, tonight, in a neighboring town.
“Are you sure?” we asked him.
“Yes. Yes. Do not worry. It is no problem.”
“Okay,” we said. “All right. Thank you.”
The self-help-reading, self-employed Rich Guy, however, was appalled at our willingness to trust the mechanic. He inserted himself into our conversation, talking gruffly to the men in Hindi.