The Boatman

by John Burbidge

  Here, again, being a foreigner made the process a little more bearable, especially in smaller bank branches in rural towns where the outsider was still a novelty. As soon as it was known you had entered his precincts, the branch manager would whisk you into his office, demand chai, and engage you in conversation, while his staff discreetly attended to your banking needs. Whether he has looking for diversion from his mundane routines or thought he had landed a high-paying customer, I could never quite tell. But it is another instance in India where I felt I was being honored simply for who I was.

  On this bright, summery morning, however, I didn’t have to jump through such hoops. I walked past the armed guard at the main door, went up to the first available teller, and asked for Vilas. She called to a peon who grudgingly shuffled off into the warren of cubicles behind the counter.

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ she said, pointing to a wooden bench. As I sat down, I tried to figure out what to say to Vilas after last night. And what of the future? How could I promise I’d see him again, when I never knew where I might be assigned next? It was an excruciating few minutes. I began to wish I had not come, but written a note instead. At that moment, a side door swung open and into the lobby strode Vilas.

  ‘So you got my message,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m so glad you came. Come, let us go and take tea.’

  We went around the corner to an Irani restaurant that opened onto the street. Chai appeared from nowhere. Words, on the other hand, were awfully scarce. Vilas broke the silence.

  ‘It was very nice, how we enjoyed last night. I’ve never taken bath with another guy,’ he grinned.

  ‘It was a first for me too.’ Vilas shifted in his chair.

  ‘You must be leaving today?’

  ‘Sadly, yes. I have to be back in Bombay tomorrow.’

  The glow from his face when he first met me in the bank disappeared. I was desperately trying to figure out how I might see him again, but I knew there was little chance. And even if I did, it would only mean putting off the inevitable for another six months, after which I would probably be leaving India for good. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that.

  ‘I might come to Bombay some time. My mummy’s brother is there and she visits him now and then.’

  ‘That would be great,’ I said. Then another thought flashed through my mind.

  ‘I have to go to Delhi in a couple of weeks for a conference. I’ll see if I can stop here on the way back.’

  At this, Vilas perked up. He took his right hand in his left and clicked his knuckles.

  ‘You have my phone number. Please call before you come. My mummy understands a little English.’

  We sat in silence for a while, then he said, ‘Well, Mr. John, I must be going back to work. I could come to the station to see you off this afternoon.’

  ‘Thank you, Vilas, that’s most kind of you, but please don’t bother. And don’t call me Mister. John is fine.’

  He stood and offered his hand for me to shake. I did and gave it one last firm, long squeeze.

  ‘Namaste, mera dost,’ I mumbled, as my eyes moistened. Vilas walked out of the restaurant and down the street. I was so overcome with sadness, I collapsed into my seat. I have often felt sadness when parting company with close friends, but on this occasion I felt completely wiped out. The adrenaline rush that overcame me on meeting Vilas had run its course and left me like an empty shell washed up on a beach. The thought of fronting up in a public relations manager’s office and soliciting one more advertisement for our brochure was the last thing I wanted to do. Instead, I started whistling a tune from a favorite Bollywood movie.

  Yeh dosti, hum nahi todenge

  Todenge dum magar, tera saath na chodenge

  [We will never break this friendship

  My strength may break, but I will not leave your side]

  I suddenly became aware that people were looking at me and I snapped out my reverie. I stopped whistling and raised my hand to my mouth as if to muffle the sound. As I did so, I smelled the scent from Vilas’s handshake. I inhaled and held my breath.

  Two days later, sitting in a staff meeting in Bombay, I could still detect a trace of that lingering scent. Memories of Vilas and Ramesh flooded my mind, as I retreated to another world where dreams became real and pleasure overruled pain—an ephemeral world, perhaps, but one that made me delight in being alive. It had taken almost six years in India to arrive at this place, and now I didn’t want to leave.

  SCARED TO DEATH

  My visits to Calcutta were sporadic at first, but became more frequent as time passed. The more I traveled to Calcutta, the more I came to love this shambolic place. Across India, those at the bottom of the economic pile shared a common fate, but in Calcutta their defiant, we-shall-overcome spirit reached its zenith. Self-help organizations abounded, from makeshift alleyway classrooms to the more hallowed halls of the Sisters of Charity. Our small group was one tiny drop in this mighty ocean. We focused on equipping local people with leadership, planning and learning skills to enable them to be more effective in their work.

  During the day, I would help raise money to support this work. By night, my personal agenda would take over. Given our stringent working and living conditions, getting out in the evening was a perfectly natural thing to do. The regularity of my evening sorties couldn’t fail to attract attention, but since my conversation with Sandy at the Marines Club, I no longer felt cloaked in guilt. I didn’t need to sneak out when no one was looking; I’d calmly and unapologetically make my exit. However, Sandy’s frequent admonitions to ‘take care’ reminded me that Calcutta by night was not without its dangers. Had she known some of the places I frequented, she might well have expressed much greater concern.

  After visiting a number of Indian cities, I had grown adept at locating likely spots to make contact with young men. Apart from public toilets and crowded trains, preferred locales included parks and gardens. Calcutta was no exception. While its most expansive maidan was located close to the heart of the city, its sparse vegetation made it the least conducive to my intentions. ‘The Lakes’ in south Calcutta was more to my tastes. This public park, thick with trees and shrubs and sprinkled with lakes, boasted rowing clubs, a stadium, an open-air theater, and a children’s park. At night, it became a favored place for men seeking trysts with men. Even smaller neighborhood parks were ripe for the picking. If, during the day, I came across a park that looked promising, I would make a mental note of it, along with the number of the tram or bus that traveled past, so I could return by night to check it out. I took great pleasure in this reconnoitering and soon learned the layout of many an Indian city—something that amazed, puzzled and impressed many of my fellow staff members.

  Initial forays in Calcutta were rewarding. About a kilometer from our staff residence was a small oval that served as a sports field by day and a neighborhood node at night. On my first visit I had walked slowly several times along its perimeter to check out the crowd. I noticed a bench tucked back in a dingy corner of the park in the shadows of a bunch of eucalyptus trees. As I sat down, I saw a sturdy young man dressed in a red-checked lungi and white T-shirt making his way to the center of the field. He could have been a laborer who hauled bags of cement or flour or carried wicker baskets full of fruit and vegetables on his head. His raw physicality sent a charge through me, as I watched him chatting to another young man. An occasional chuckle punctuated their exchange but I was out of earshot. When his companion drifted off, he turned and came towards me, his lungi brushing back and forth against his leg as he walked, revealing a faint outline of his manhood. His tousled hair gave him an air of cheekiness as he strode confidently in my direction. When he was within a few meters of me, he lowered his left hand and scratched his crotch. Indian men often did this unthinkingly in public, but this was no such innocent gesture.

  He passed me by, then looked back. I uncrossed my legs. That was all he needed. Turning around, he advanced towards me and lowered himself onto the bench. As he sat
down, he didn’t speak but his broad mouth with its upturned lips begged to be kissed. He had spun his web and I was caught.

  ‘Ingrezi kotha bolo?’ I asked to break the ice.

  He shook his head to indicate he spoke no English. Instead, he just pointed to the middle of the park. At first, I didn’t know what he was driving at, but I decided to follow his cue. As I stood, he grabbed my hand and led me into the center of the field. It was a friendly, playful gesture no Indian had ever offered me before. As we walked together, his body’s sweaty odor washed over me. Since it was pitch dark and there was no moon, it would have been virtually impossible for someone walking along the boundary to see what was going on at the center.

  When he judged we had come far enough, he sank down onto the grass and pointed for me to follow. No sooner had I done so, than he raised one leg. I leaned over to take hold of him but he pushed my head down towards his crotch. I pulled back and shook my head. He’d have to settle for less, or nothing at all. He begrudgingly backed down and let me continue until he released his pent-up energy in a surge of unashamed delight. After reciprocating, he stood and prepared to leave. Just before he did, I kissed him lightly on the cheek. He didn’t flinch, as I expected he might. Instead, he faced me and did the same, before turning around and vanishing into the night.

  * * *

  Return visits to Calcutta were full of such episodes, each trying to outdo the previous in ways I never imagined. My long-repressed sexual drive and the sense of anonymity I felt in Calcutta were a powerful but dangerous combination. How much longer could I go on upping the ante before being brought to heel?

  During one visit, I was introduced to a group of young men who met every Wednesday after work in the back room of an electrical store. I had met one of them in a casual encounter and he invited me to come along. The owner allowed his premises to be used as a gathering place for gay friends and acquaintances in search of that most prized possession—privacy. In the dark shadows of this empty room, intimacy became possible in ways it was not anywhere else for most of these young men.

  For me it had another value. It led me to develop a small but trusted group of friends who became an anchor in my turbulent life—a medical student, a teacher and a merchant seaman whose travels around the globe furnished him with tales that made the rest of us drool in incredulity. We would sometimes meet over coffee and pastries at Flury’s Café or eat Chinese food in a Park Street restaurant. Our tête-à-têtes had a hint of friendly one-upmanship, as we dared to disclose with whom we did it and under what circumstances. Sometimes we shared names and phone numbers of fellow members of our little cabal. We knew we all risked something, though my Indian friends stood to lose much more than I, should things go awry. The unbearable shame such disclosure would bring and the negative reaction of family members made theirs a much less enviable situation than mine.

  Most days, I tried not to think about such things. My time was precious, my calendar full. I was energized by a sense of being part of a historically important event that the exposition promised to be, and being on a vital mission of self-exploration from which I could not cut and run. Mostly, these two enterprises functioned in separate orbits but occasionally their trajectories crossed in the most surprising ways. One such occurrence stands out in my memory, if only for its serendipitous nature.

  It was a warm Friday evening and I was following a lead given me by a close friend. I had spoken with the guy by phone and he welcomed my visit. Priding myself in my ability to navigate Calcutta, I told him I would go to his place. However, he lived in an outlying area of the city so it took me a lengthy tram ride and another by bus to arrive in the vicinity of his home. When I stepped down from the bus, the last of the evening light was rapidly fading from the sky, so I tried making a mental note of landmarks that would help me find my way out later.

  I noticed a dim light in a tailor’s shop, so I made for it and pulled out the piece of paper on which I’d written the name and address of my quarry.

  ‘Yeh pata malum hai?’ I asked as I unfolded the paper and handed it to him.

  The tailor squinted in the dull light and screwed up his eyes. He motioned with his chin in the direction of the more major of two roads leading from the intersection. I asked him how far along the road I should go. He assured me it wasn’t far, but when I pressed him for a number, he suggested one or two kilometers. Bracing myself for a long walk, I set off in the direction the tailor had indicated. Streetlights were few and far between, and the number of people on the street thinned the further I went down the road. After I’d gone about three blocks, I had an uneasy feeling that I was heading in the wrong direction, so I decided to check again. Ideally, I was looking for someone likely to speak English. At that moment, as if on cue, a group of three young men rounded the corner and headed in my direction.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find this address. Can you help me?’

  ‘Let me see,’ said the tallest of the three, holding out his hand to receive my slip of paper. Something about his appearance rang a faint bell in the back of my mind.

  ‘Ah yah,’ he replied. ‘You go about half a kilometer this way, come to a roundabout, turn left and left again. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Your good name, please?’

  His prompt about-face took me by surprise. I obliged his first few queries then decided to play the game in reverse.

  ‘Actually, I work in Bombay also,’ he said. ‘I am just visiting family here in Cal.’

  When I probed further, I discovered that he was the personal assistant to the general manager of an electrical appliances firm headquartered in Bombay. The company was one I was familiar with because I had visited it with Sir James in connection with the exposition.

  ‘How strange!’ he declared. ‘I know your institute. Your president visited my boss a short while back, about some rural development conference. Sir James someone-or-other, if I recall. He used to live here in Calcutta I am told. He had a young foreigner with him. We had a very nice chat about cricket and such.’

  It all came back to me. We had met and talked about nine months before while waiting for his boss to admit Sir James and me. But in the dim light of this Calcutta backstreet he didn’t recognize me. How unbelievable that we should meet up again, on the other side of the continent, in such circumstances. It was bizarre, almost frighteningly so. Was this a sign that something was conspiring to bring the two diverse strands of my life together into some common thread? This preposterous thought kept nagging at me. Right now, a more urgent question confronted me. Should I reveal my identity or would that only embarrass the guy? If I told him that I was the person with whom he had talked that day in the office, it would only have humiliated him. I had learned many things in my years in India and one was the Asian gift for saving face. Now, I decided, was the time to apply this lesson. I chatted for a few more minutes and thanked him for his help before heading off in the direction he had indicated.

  * * *

  As my nightly expeditions began to extend farther afield, I would often take a tram, then walk home to take in more of the city and maybe score an extra hit before the night ended. On one occasion, I began the long trek home with a sense of disappointment, having missed the high I now took for granted as my right each time I ventured out. As I covered block after block, my longing for a quick fix escalated. I soon noticed the quality of homes had improved from small, dilapidated houses to sizable bungalows with high walls. I had stumbled into one of Calcutta’s more affluent areas. Most residences had sturdy iron gates and a gatekeeper to oversee them, sometimes with a watchdog as well. A chowkidar usually resided in a small shed just inside the gate.

  As I strolled along, I noted nameplates on the walls. These were the homes of lawyers and doctors, ambassadors and government officials, as well as some who preferred to remain anonymous. One house particularly intrigued me. Brilliant orange and purple bougainvillea trailed over its walls like long, iridescent fingers. As I stopped a
nd gazed at the spectacle in the streetlight, a slender figure materialized from the shadows behind the gate. We stared at each other for several minutes, then he motioned to me with his hand. Wearing chappals, pajama pants and a long-sleeved shirt, he must have been no more than 18 years old. He’d wrapped his head in a dark woolen scarf to ward off the damp evening air.

  ‘Namaste,’ I said.

  ‘Russia?’ he asked.

  Why would he think I were Russian? Then it struck me. Probably a number of Russians lived in or visited Calcutta. India had close ties to the then Soviet Union and more so in West Bengal with its Communist state government. Guessing me to be Russian would have been a logical choice. Perhaps there was a Russian residence or consulate nearby. My mind played mental leapfrog.

  ‘No. Australia,’ I replied.

  ‘You live near?’

  ‘Not far.’

  ‘What you like?’ he asked in a typically cut-the-crap fashion I had come to admire in Indians of his ilk.

  Stepping up to the plate, I swung the bat for all it was worth.

  ‘I like you.’

  I couldn’t believe I’d said it. ‘You must be out of your crazy, sex-starved mind,’ I thought to myself. He wasn’t much to look at. I didn’t know a thing about him; he didn’t know anything about me. He didn’t need to. I was desperate for one last fling.

  ‘How much?’ he asked.