But out on the interstate the road cut through the forests like a railway through wilderness, with only the odd turnoff sign to remind drivers of the American towns huddling behind the trees. At predictable intervals a combination gas station/liquor store would float by in a halogen bubble, briefly commanding our attention like a television set flicked on in a dark room.
ALL CONVERSATIONS THERE LED BACK TO THE FAVOURED SCAPEGOAT, TORONTO, INEVITABLY DESCRIBED AS SHALLOW, GREEDY, GRASPING—A “CITY OF RATS” WAS MY FAVOURITE.
Danny had passed out after finally relinquishing the map, and only Gary and I and a young hippie couple—Ken and Diane—were still awake, huddled in the front of the van, passing a joint back and forth. Back in Toronto, “Hacky Sack” and “patchouli” and any other words connected to hippies were as automatically laugh-inducing as speaking in an exaggerated German accent, but we were getting along with everyone but Danny. Ken asked Gary about the different punk bands that he’d roadied for and the two of them began trading traveller’s stories. Gary’s always featured an adversarial redneck or two and some unlikely saviour, maybe an old black cop who collected obscure jazz records.
Ken then explained the idea behind the barter fair, how people there were trying to “get off the money grid” by bartering what they made or grew.
“I see it like this,” he said. “A bunch of people could get some land up around Alaska—it’s practically free under the Homestead Act. We would put up cabins and waxworks and ironworks and stoneworks, so that all the North American gypsies like us would have a place to make their crafts in the winter.”
When we were alone, Gary would mock Ken’s idealism, but for now he was gracious and attentive, like a father listening to a child’s plan for a go-kart with amphibious wheels and retractable wings.
The barter fair’s campsite was set on a plateau against the side of a low, crumbling mountain. It was the only flat land in sight. The yellow grass and little herds of trees rolled off in uneven waves toward the mountains in the west and the prairies in the east, giving the place the lonely feel of a borderland. My first thought on stumbling out of the van was that the site was a pioneer homestead abandoned in impossibly tragic circumstances by the very family that broke their bodies clearing the trees and rocks.
Danny was already awake and talking to a muscular hippie in a porkpie hat named Sage.
“You know a guy named Ernie Low?” Sage asked.
“I know Ernie Wild.”
“What about Free?”
“Where’s he from?”
“All over.”
“No. What about Tripper John?”
Sage’s story: Sage is a sacred plant burned in Native American ceremonies. Sage wears a sprig of it in his hat. Sage is an ex-Marine who worked for three years as a bill collector for hospitals before a vision changed his life. In the vision, everyone around him was a walking corpse. “Was he living or was he dead?” he had to ask himself. Now he barters handmade hookahs.
Gary and I began to explore. A kind of oval roadway had been mowed through the grass, with cars and vans and buses tightly parked all around it. There didn’t seem to be much organized bartering—no one had travelled by caravan to trade a season’s harvest for bolts of cloth and spices and cooking pots. There was organic produce “For Sale or Barter,” handcrafted pipes and drums and silver jewellery laid out on blankets, the odd keener standing behind a folding table displaying homemade soap or lumpy pottery. Massage tables were set up about every fifty feet, and a few professional flea market vendors sold a hundred things made out of plastic. The younger hippies strolled around like party-goers checking out the host’s bookshelves and record collection, pausing to touch something they coveted but rarely asking how much it cost. Their bodies displayed patches of Lollapalooza paganism—piercings and vaguely Oriental tattoos—and they’d replaced 1960s tie-dye with Mayan and Incan peasant wear, but otherwise the young hippies were doing a cover version of another generation’s anthem.
Within an hour Gary had divided the campers into three categories: weekenders, freaks and real people, the first category outnumbering the other two by a wide margin. We retreated into our private world of nasty asides and withering comments.
Gary (standing before a canvas teepee with some kind of bird painted over the entrance): “You think there’s any Indians in there?”
Me: “Jungians, maybe.”
Me: “You can’t find yourself when you’re high all the time.”
Gary: “You can’t find your shoes when you’re high all the time.”
Gary had stopped to buy three cases of beer in the last town before the campsite, violating the No Alcohol or Firearms sign at the gate. The beer was in high demand, though. We traded beer for food, two thick undershirts and a set of coasters. After trading eight beers for two grams of mushrooms, we accepted just about anything—little wizards carved out of driftwood, packs of damp incense, a pack of nudie cards with a Queen of Hearts who looked like Gary’s favourite high school teacher.
Eventually we shared the beer with the real people. A guy who lived in a trailer and made jewellery, upon hearing that we were Canadian, told tender stories of Neil Young’s influence on his life. Around a communal campfire, two ex-therapists joked about their former clients. A woman and her husband explained a system they’d developed for getting their goats in faster at the end of the day. They all wore plain faded clothes over their faded skin and had home-cut hair; their arms were tightly wound rope and their midsections were shaped like feed bags. Something had been broken and remade in every one of them, and in the firelight you could catch their former identities asserting themselves in ghost gestures: a sudden hand movement acquired in boardroom deal-making sessions, a batting of the eyes that was once a signal for flirtation—the fading accents of pioneers abandoning their mother tongue. One of the ex-therapists would rest his chin in his right hand—the professional’s pose of thoughtful introspection—but he’d shoo the affectation away by squeezing his jaw.
A GUY WHO LIVED IN A TRAILER AND MADE JEWELLERY, UPON HEARING THAT WE WERE CANADIAN, TOLD TENDER STORIES OF NEIL YOUNG’S INFLUENCE ON HIS LIFE.
Some people were just broken. A bearded man in a David Crosby hat wandered a tight circumference around his ex-wife’s car, lamenting everything from their failed marriage to the death of the counterculture.
“My woman,” he cooed, “she’s still into that Tom Robbins rainbow bullshit because she can’t accept the responsibilities of motherhood.”
Both of them had been beautiful once, you could see it in their fairy-faced children. She had driven the kids to the fair from Seattle, and he had followed. She was hoping to sell enough of her belongings to make it to LA where some unspoken salvation waited for her. Her possessions were laid out in neat rows on a blanket in front of the car. There were scuffed beauty products and hair clips, broken toys, radios and mounds of clothing, all arranged in a series of seemingly patterned lines like a cyclical epic poem recorded in pictographs.
“You didn’t even bring a tent,” he said.
“You can’t keep a fucking job,” she said.
People were heading toward a dome of orange light and shadow flickering against a hill just beyond the campsite. A few bongo drums began shepherding the looser beats around a simple, mid-tempo heartbeat.
We were lying in the grass and Gary grabbed my arm. “It’s a fucking drum circle. Can you believe people are still doing that shit?” We started to race toward the light. When was the last time I’d actually raced anyone? We were giggling and trying to trip each other, ruts and little rises nipping at our ankles, and when I got ahead, Gary tackled me from behind.
We sat on the hill and looked down. At least two hundred people were gathered around a bonfire. Some were dancing, the rest watched and swayed and clapped and played drums. Many were falling into self-willed trances, and they took off their shirts and described shapes in the air.
Gary was furious: the three personality types he had so meticul
ously classified had spontaneously come together, and the weekenders were, as always, calling the most attention to themselves. Even the firelight seemed to favour them, striping their young bodies with shadows that highlighted the women’s ripe curves and the men’s easy musculature.
Gary waved his hand at the scene and yelled, “You’re all going back to fucking work on Monday!”
I wasn’t so sure. The Neil Young fan was quietly smiling to himself. One of the ex-therapists was dancing naked before the fire and laughing, possibly at himself. And there was poor, red-faced Danny, blowing a huge joint and duck-walking around the edge of the circle. He handed the joint to someone and pulled a harmonica out of his back pocket and began to play.
James Grainger is an editor and writer in Toronto who doesn’t leave the city as much as he should. His work has appeared in Quill & Quire and the Toronto Star.
I have come looking for answers to a question I am just starting to formulate.
022Destination: India
HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE SCOTCH
Arjun Basu
Even by the dusty standards of India, this is a dusty place. The air is thick with it. Street lights are rendered impotent. Dust coats the buildings, the sidewalks, the cars and taxis and auto rickshaws.
The bus pulls into an empty plaza and sighs. It’s midnight. I’ve just come from Delhi. Eight hours. My bones ache.
The driver opens the door, and the dust rushes in. I stand and reach in the overhead bin for my backpack. I wait. The front half of the bus is crammed with families overburdened by a Korean factory’s worth of home electronics purchased in the big city.
Whatever I came to find in India is not going to be found here. The town is unremarkable save for its botanical institute and an exclusive private school. The Gandhi boys went to school here. The locals are proud of that. I step off the bus, take in the surroundings and read my Lonely Planet. The town rates less than a page: Dehra Dun, gateway to the Himalayan foothills (though here, in the shadow of the “roof of the world,” eight thousand feet will get you a foothill, if that).
Scrawny chickens are everywhere, pecking at the gravel on the dusty roads. The plaza is surrounded by small tin-shack restaurants advertising tandoori chicken, the smoke from the ovens a low-lying haze.
I make out a hotel sign down a side street. Behind a ratty-looking door is a flight of brightly lit stairs painted what I’ve taken to calling “Krishna blue.” The distorted sounds of a television fill the stairwell. All I ask of this hotel is basic cleanliness. And a lack of smells.
I could use a beer.
The innkeeper.
At the top of the stairs, a man with a round face and simple expression stares intently at the TV. An actress lip-synchs to a voice that is just this side of chipmunk. She dashes from tree to tree, coyly hiding from a flaccid-looking guy with a cheesy moustache. I have just described a scene from every Bollywood production that has enthralled this crazy, complicated nation. The actress has finished singing and now the actor gets overly emotive as he lip-synchs his lines. The innkeeper turns to me and smiles. A large, friendly smile.
“No more room,” he says, his head doing that comical head-shake Indians do to affirm the negative.
I drop my backpack. “I’m tired.” I say.
“No room.” The innkeeper waves his hand in the general direction of my face. “And no English,” he says.
“I just got off the bus and I need a bed. Anything you have. I’m tired. Please.” “Bed,” he says. He points to a cot in the hallway behind me. “Light off. No problem.” And with this he smiles some more, generally pleased to have offered me something.
The actress starts lip-synching again and I’ve lost him. “Ah hah hah,” he says, closing his eyes rapturously. His head bobs to the tune like paper caught in a gentle breeze.
I walk to the cot and sit. “I’ll take it,” I say. The innkeeper is lost in his Bollywood reverie. “I’ll take it,” I say a little louder. Nothing. His fingers drum the desk. He’s playing tabla, accompanying the chipmunk voice and the synthetic drone of the music, dreaming of a world where he always gets the girl. “I’ll take the damned cot!” I yell.
A door opens across the hall. A distinguished-looking older man in a beige safari suit eyes me. His thick white hair and white moustache show signs of obsessive grooming. “Why would one sleep on a cot?” he asks in an English that hints at a British education.
I look at him dumbly. The bus, the bumps and turns and sheer length of the ordeal have rendered me helpless.
“I know of a double room occupied by a young university boy,” the old man says, raising his eyebrows. “Interested?”
Before I can answer he has rushed down the hall and knocked on a door. The innkeeper runs after him. The door opens and the two men disappear inside. “He will fix you up,” says yet another man who appears in the doorway of the old man’s room. “He knows these things, yes?” This man is younger, with a foppish Beatles haircut, and bushy moustache. He’s tall and thin and swarthy. He looks like a man who can tell an easy lie. “You will have no problems.” He picks at his teeth with a well-used toothpick.
THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH THE SOUNDS OF GLUTTONY. THE OLD MAN STANDS AND RAISES HIS GLASS. “TO CANADA,” HE SAYS. “IT APPEARS TO BE A NICE PLACE. AT LEAST IN THE PHOTOS I’VE SEEN.”
“Actually, I’d just like a beer,” I say. “I’d settle for a pop.”
“We can do better,” the swarthy man says cryptically.
The door at the end of the hall opens again and the innkeeper motions for me to come. The swarthy man picks up a shopping bag and walks down the hall. I pick up my backpack and follow, slowly, resigned to this weirdness, to another strange experience in a country full of them. A semi-crazed Brit in Delhi had told me, “India just doesn’t stop,” and I am starting to understand what he meant.
The room is large and well-furnished. The old man and the swarthy man sit on fine leather chairs. The innkeeper, his head bobbing with great joy, points to an empty king-sized bed. On another bed sits the student, dressed in grey pants and a white shirt. His hair is rumpled, his shirt creased. The look on his face indicates that he was either woken up abruptly or was caught masturbating. He manages a weak smile.
I sit on the empty bed and drop my backpack. “Drink?” the swarthy man asks.
“Yes!” the old man shouts. “Look at him! We all need drinks, but first we will require glasses!”
At this the innkeeper leaves the room. I look to the student, my roommate, and introduce myself. “I’m Ashok,” he says wearily, shaking my hand.
“Our friend is ready to enter engineering school,” the old man announces proudly. “I made his acquaintance this morning. Tomorrow we will take him to Mussoorie. It is beautiful and not so hot. The food is terrible and expensive. The scenery more than makes up for it, however. You should come as well.”
“Mussoorie’s not on my itinerary,” I say. I haven’t circled it in my Lonely Planet. The plan is to avoid the places tourists go, and Mussoorie is this country’s approximation of Banff. “I want to go north. To Dharamsala and Simla. Kulu and Manali. Try and get to Keylong.” Keylong, everyone has been telling me, is a stunner, on the other side of the Himalayas, on the Tibetan Plateau.
“Fine, fine, you will have time for that later,” the old man says. “But tomorrow we are spending the day in Mussoorie and you will join us.”
The swarthy man pulls two bottles of Johnnie Walker Red out of his shopping bag. He opens one and takes a swig and passes it to the old man who does the same. I’m not a Scotch drinker at all. I can’t even remember if I’ve ever finished a glass of it.
The innkeeper returns with glasses and a funny smile on his face. He says something in Hindi. “Excellent!” the old man says.
The glasses are passed around and quickly filled. Triples easily. The old man raises his glass. “A toast. To our American friend.”
I put the drink to my lips and take a sip. My stomach makes a half-turn. My toes cu
rl. But the taste that lingers on my tongue is pleasing. My palate is a step ahead of my gut. The drink feels right, whatever that means, and so I take another sip and my stomach turns a little more. “I’m Canadian,” I say.
The old man stands bolt up. “This is incredible!” he announces. “My son works at the Indian consulate in Toronto!”
The innkeeper claps. He obviously understands more English than he’s let on.
“You must know him,” the swarthy man says stupidly.
“I’m from Montreal,” I say.
The old man sits again. “There’s nothing wrong with that!” He takes a long sip of his drink. “My son posts the Scotch via diplomatic pouch. No tax. Very convenient. Drink up. Another toast!”
AN ACTRESS LIP-SYNCHS TO A VOICE THAT IS JUST THIS SIDE OF CHIPMUNK. SHE DASHES FROM TREE TO TREE, COYLY HIDING FROM A FLACCID-LOOKING GUY WITH A CHEESY MOUSTACHE. I HAVE JUSTDESCRIBED A SCENE FROM EVERY BOLLYWOOD PRODUCTION THAT HAS ENTHRALLED THIS CRAZY, COMPLICATED NATION. THE ACTRESS HAS FINISHED SINGING AND NOW THE ACTOR GETS OVERLY EMOTIVE AS HE LIP-SYNCHS HIS LINES. THE INNKEEPER TURNS TO ME AND SMILES.
The swarthy man downs his Scotch in a dangerous-looking gulp. He’s a professional, I think. The old man does the same. I’ve just realized that the innkeeper isn’t drinking, and for whatever reason I find this annoying. Ashok takes the tiniest of sips. “Go on,” the old man says to him, laughing. “This drink is civilization itself.” Ashok closes his eyes and gulps the Scotch down and holds his head for a second. He stays like that, still, and then his eyes are open and he is smiling triumphantly.
It is my turn. This situation must be the definition of peer pressure. I stare at my glass, close my eyes and before I realize I’ve done it, the glass is empty, my insides on fire. Just as quickly, the fire subsides and I see myself holding my glass out for more. I may be drunk already.
A man wearing a dirty T-shirt and a dhooti enters, bearing an enormous platter of tandoori chicken. “Fabulous!” the old man says. The platter is placed on the floor and the lowly-looking man leaves.
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