Dharma Sutra

by David Pugh

  I was helped into their guardroom and the promised cup of chai was put on the table.

  ‘That was very clumsy of me; you see I have had an accident with my eye.’

  ‘Well, it is indeed your lucky day, sir,’ the guard who first beckoned me over beamed, ‘Mahendranagar, on the other side, has the very best eye hospital in Nepal.’

  ‘Now, if you can be pleased to wait a little time and take another tea with us?’ all three officers present were smiling at me.

  ‘Really, is there a problem?’ I was more than a little nervous; they had my passport on the table. My adopted name had caused some suspicious looks in the past.

  ‘No, no! Sir, it is only that our boss must supervise the stamping of all foreign passports, wait, wait,’ and wait I did.

  Thirty-five minutes later a very young but well-groomed man entered,

  ‘Ah, a foreign visitor, I hope you have enjoyed your stay in my country?’

  ‘Passport, oh dear, this name must have caused you some problems?’ he squints at me.

  ‘Of course, the real Jeffrey Dahmer’, emphasising the “H”, ‘had his head stoved-in, in some prison and with a steel pipe, I believe.’

  ‘Good thing too, we don’t want blighters like him wasting prison resources.’

  ‘I have a first-class honours degree, you know,’ obviously, I didn’t, ‘yet I end up in a hole like this, the very arse of Nepal.’

  He had kept his voice down, not to upset his subordinates, ‘Decent enough fellows but not a qualification worth talking about between them.’

  No vehicles are allowed across the bridge to Nepali immigration, you have to use a fixed-price horse and cart, very nineteenth century and rather jolly, despite watching through one good eye. I had put a handkerchief over the right eye, thinking a rest might help.

  The next morning I found Mahendranagar eye hospital with little difficulty. As a tourist, embarrassingly, I was given preferential treatment and taken to the consultation room, bypassing rows of farmers. Two hours of checks from two specialists, I was diagnosed with a burst blood vessel and told that there was a fifty percent chance it would clear in six weeks. The total bill for consultation and medication was 75 Nepali rupees; I never bother with insurance while travelling on the subcontinent.

  Chapter 27: Kathmandu

  Jeffrey’s Journal, Nepal

  Kathmandu, I love, it’s lived up to my teenage dreams. It’s a science-fiction vision come true, a fourteenth-century heart with the worst case of concrete pollution I’ve ever seen in its dust-coated suburbs. It’s as if the God of Builders has emptied his cosmic cement bags in a circle around the old city, entrapping the centre in the 1970s. I’m living on Freak Street for the next month, finding inspiration in this city; I always envied the artists who created the Metal Hurlant, French comic anthology title of the Seventies. Where did Phillipe Druillet and Moebius get their crazy architecture and weird people from? Last Saturday I found myself inside the pages of their artwork, weird temples dwarfed by ugly towers, tiny hobbit doorways, with little people still able to pass through them without stooping, beautiful elfin girls on motor scooters, complete with hooped tights. Off-duty soldiers, still in uniform practising their marching techniques on rooftops, chill out music and best of all, the voice of Leonard Cohen vibrating the air. They love St Leonard here and quite rightly too, it’s a city for lovers and no one expresses feelings of love better than the man with the golden voice.

  Buddhas are rising serenely above the stoned hippies, Moslem extremists, proclaiming their Aryan superiority, hiding amongst this melting pot of Nepal’s tribes. If I had been able to come here in my hippie days, it would have changed my life, the magic of the Old City is intense and it leaves me on a perpetual high. I do not understand why the younger generation has occupied the Thamel district to the north; it’s a dead zone of shops and pretentious restaurants. Here in the Dhaulagiri Guesthouse, I look out on an inner courtyard, down onto a stone lingam, passing through a yoni, under the voyeuristic stare of Nandi, the black bull of Shiva. From the roof I can see the many towers of Durbar Square and this sunny morning, through the smog, I saw the roof of the world.

  I was devastated when I heard of the death toll and the destruction of Durbar Square during the 2017 earthquake. It will take many years to reconstruct this magical city, I hope many of you will feel inspired to visit Kathmandu and help rebuild this unique and magical city.

  Previously I had spent a month at the Tashiling Tibetan Colony in Pokhara. I was having a litre of raksi, rice whisky delivered daily, after a bottle of strong Star Gold beer, maybe finishing the evening with a glass of Officer’s Choice whisky, all very cheap and available in almost every food shop. I slipped into the Tibetan Nepalese drinking culture, but I believe it was to deaden the enormity of trying to come to terms with how The Gambia has changed my life.

  Chapter 28: My Brother, My Killer

  Now, I, Suliman Manneh, must continue the drama, my voice will guide through the mind and voyages of my good but rather shallow friend, Mr Remus Jallow.

  ‘Please sir, could you step through the gate again?’ the official spoke in French, ‘This time could you remove the ornamentation from your hair.’ He indicated the small padlocks which dangled from several of Remus’ dreadlocks. This was at the security gate of Leopold Sedar Senghor airport, Dakar, Senegal. Remus had been booked on an Ethiopian Airways flight to Bamako and then on to his spiritual homeland’s capital, Addis Ababa. Remus’ tribal birth name was Ahuben Selassie Jallow, thus forming in his young mind a deep connection with the Rastafarian Messiah, Haile Selassie, former emperor of Ethiopia. Remus could barely contain his joy; he had a passport, a bankcard, a seat reserved on his first flight and a plan of his own. He had made me acquainted with Bob Jatta’s wish for him to track down Sylvia’s husband and plead for him to divorce Sylvia.

  I was certain the evil Bob was expecting Remus to do more than talk with the pleasant old man. I advised Remus to exercise caution when dealing with Bob the Bordello Builder, but Remus was in awe of him and his wealth.

  ‘Not worry, friend Suliman,’ he spoke in Wolof, ‘Remus have plan!’ The plan was to get as far as Ethiopia and spend the rest of his life in the Rastafarian paradise town of Shashamane. In 1948 Emperor Haile Selassie donated 500 acres of his private land to allow members of the Rastafari community from Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean to go to settle there. Remus could then spend the rest of his days withdrawing Bob Jatta’s money from an ATM, thinking Bob would assume the money was taken out in India. Remus was very naïve in the ways of world banking.

  As the plane came into land at Ethiopia, Remus gazed like Moses over the Land of Milk and Honey. All his heart’s logging was below him, endless days of ganja, beer and dusky maidens.

  He had neglected his studies of Rastafarianism; Rastas are teetotal. To Remus’ disappointment his plans to go to the Promised Land, like Moses’ were foiled on landing at Addis Ababa, when he attempted to exit the airport building. He was blocked by a pretty lady airport officer, who said in very clear English, ‘No, no sir, the transit lounge is this way,’ and shepherded him onto his flight to Delhi.

  Chapter 29: Paharganja

  ‘Ninkal unkam vimanam iruntarkala?’ Remus looked blank at the Delhi immigration official, who had just scanned his Indian passport. ‘I’m sorry,’ the officer continued, ‘I see from your passport that you were born in Tamil Nadu, like my father, I simply asked if you had enjoyed your flight, though it is not my job to appear friendly.’

  ‘No, no I sorry,’ Remus mumbled, ‘I been Africa long time.’

  Someone had suggested that Remus would travel easier on an Indian passport. Indeed, there were many very black men in Tamil Nadu. ‘Intiya varavenka!’ and the official waved Remus on his way.

  ‘You can’t bring that on here, you bloody gollywog!’ Remus was about to board the high-speed rail link to New Delhi station, holding an ice cream he had just bought.

  ‘Can’t you bloody read?�
�� the guard was pointing at an English sign, which read, “No food or drink allowed and strictly no spitting!” Remus dropped the ice cream on the platform.

  ‘That’s better,’ smiled the guard, ‘now keep my bloody train clean, you damn nigger!’ Remus was starting to believe that he was not going to like India; he was still nursing his disappointment that his Ethiopian adventure hadn’t happened. He had been told by Sylvia to go to the travellers’ hangout opposite New Delhi station, the Paharganj, from there he could arrange a bus to Dharamsala. He needed to find a hotel for the night and stopped to ask two pretty Western girls for a suggestion. He was imagining them entertaining him in their bedroom. His fantasy was interrupted when a motor scooter carrying two fat policemen in khaki uniforms screeched to halt between them.

  ‘Damn bloody blackie,’ screamed the one on the back, ‘don’t talk to nice women, get back to Tamil Nadu and learn some manners!’ The fatter officer started beating Remus really hard with a bamboo cane, hitting him so hard that the lawman nearly dislodged the tiny bobble of a helmet he was wearing. The two hippie girls were protesting now, screaming at the policeman to stop.

  ‘These damn darkies think they can come here and seduce our women, with their big willies!’

  Remus hoped the policeman wasn’t going to lash at his big willy, so he cupped his hands over his member. The cops took off and left the three of them surrounded by a group of onlookers who had gathered to watch the show. The girls were travelling together, one French, one Czech; they led him over to a folding table, outside a small café. ‘You need another sort of blow,’ the French lady reached into her bag, pulling out a large joint.

  ‘That ganja?’ Remus eyes were widening, he hadn’t had any for days.

  ‘The finest charas from Manali,’ the Czech girl informed him.

  ‘Try,’ the French girl handed him the spliff. ‘It okay, here in street?’ Remus quizzed.

  ‘All kinds of things go on in the Paharganj,’ the Czech girl said suggestively. Remus inhaled deeply, man it was so good, like nothing he’d ever smoked before. It caused such a hit that the dusk light illuminating the street seemed to turn everything yellow.

  The French girl was rubbing his right thigh, quite near the groin. ‘Tell me,’ she pouted her lip, ‘have you really got a big willy?’ The yellow glow was spreading through his entire body; now he knew he was going to like India. He woke up next morning or maybe the morning after, these girls had so much of this charas. He was lying between the two naked women, and he still had a massive hard-on. Looking at the two ladies, he weighed up which one to have first. The French girl had hairy armpits and an impressively hairy grey-brown bush. The Czech girl had long blonde hair and completely shaved between her legs; he thought fondly of Sylvia and reached out for the bottle of Officer’s Choice whisky, next to a bowl of condoms on the bedside table. He took a mouthful of O.C. and sorted through the bewildering choice of condoms in the bowl. He chose a Durex Invisible Extra, which sounded good, slipped it on and glided his way into the sleeping Czech girl. The lady responded, without waking, still in her charas-induced dreams. Remus was admiring the formation of her labia; shaved pussy was more fun to look at. He took a few more shots of O.C. while he finished himself off, feeling more than a little guilty that he was using her as some sort of masturbation machine. His brother, Jeffrey, had given him a cassette of erotic English songs, and he was remembering one now. “It’s lovely when you’re sleeping but wide awake is best.” Another swig of O.C. and he decided that he really needed some food. His gaze drifted over to the French woman’s bush, laughing to himself, thinking how sexy it would be to shave it all off while she was sleeping. He’d leave the thick armpit hair though, as a reminder as to how lush her pubes used to be, she would be so angry with him. This fantasy caused his penis to rise up again; he slipped on a fresh Durex and plunged into the mademoiselle’s forest.

  Chapter 30: Indian Daze

  Remus became a nightly customer at his brother Jeffrey’s favourite bar, the Gem. When the mostly Nepalese waiters discovered he was a friend of Baba Dharma, he was afforded priority service. Baba Dharma had provided more than one of them with a bus ticket and pocket money, to holiday with their families in Nepal. Baba was aware how privileged he was to visit them all but to be fortunate enough to be able to fly away home at any time.

  One of the waiters pointed to a poster on the wall, the poster read,

  “To all the strangers I have met, who have become my dearest friends. Jeffrey Dharma a Lucky Ghost.” Floods of tears overtook Remus, he sobbed almost uncontrollably,

  ‘My brother Jeffrey, him good man; brother Aboboulaye not good man. I know now.’

  ‘Here you good friends, here gift from Bob Jatta, I help him be good man.’

  He handed each of the young Nepalese a thousand rupee note.

  ‘Now bring more Kingfisher Extra Strong beer and meat, lots meat.’ They had to help him into the street at closing time; fortunately, the Anwas Sarai hotel’s room he still shared with the girls was just up the street. He got into the room and slumped on the floor, back supported by the king-size bed, on which the naked Martina was asleep. Fufu walked out of the bathroom naked, drying her hair. ‘Fufu, why you not shave between legs like Martina?’ he gestured towards the sleeping girl’s exposed pudenda, ‘No hair taste nice.’

  ‘How many times have told you, you African pervert,’ she snapped, ‘I’m a woman, I want to look like a woman; Martina, she chooses to look like little girl, okay.’

  ‘Not little girl,’ Remus protested, ‘she taste good.’

  ‘I taste good too, I have shower,’ she wandered over, her crotch at his eye level, ‘you want try or you too drunk, African?’

  He tentatively licked her clitoris; it was quite big and stood out well from her hair. ‘I like charas,’ he suggested, ‘blow charas in your pussy!’

  ‘Over there in a pipe,’ she pointed to the chillum pipe next to the condom bowl, with the matches on the bedside table. Still between her legs he lit the bowl and puffed on the chillum. Indian matches can sometimes have a lot of phosphorus; it ignited a huge flame, which engulfed Fufu’s now dry pubic hair.

  ‘Bastard, you did that deliberately!’ patting out her burning bush with the damp towel.

  Turning to the mirror, she saw to her dismay that her symbol of womanhood had mostly gone up in an unholy smoke. ‘Tomorrow, I make you look pretty again, I shave all off!’ so saying Remus passed out and missed the steam of colloquial French that was hurtling in his senseless direction.

  Chapter 31: Baba Jan Singh

  ‘Remus, will you wake up and fuck me!’ Martina’s command of English was very good, then not many people speak Czech and English is the hippies’ common tongue.

  Begrudgingly, Remus fulfilled her request; he was still in a charas-induced sleep and hoped Fufu wouldn’t wake up and demand the same attention. What Martina said next, after she had orgasmed several times was, ‘Fufu and I are leaving for Manali tonight, we want to restock on charas and spend some time in the mountains, before the snow comes.’

  She paused, ‘Are you going to come with us?’

  The mountains referred to were the Himalayas, and Remus had never seen snow, but what of his mission? It had been weeks since he had given it any thought or checked any messages on his phone. Jeffrey was somewhere in the Himalayas, so it might be good sense to go with the girls, they knew their way around travellers’ India. ‘I let you know after breakfast,’ he headed for the door.

  Fufu had one eye open, ‘Remus, I saw you fucking Martina, my turn!’ She had thrown back her single sheet, revealing her now shaved pussy; rather erotically, as Remus had suggested, she had not shaved her hirsute armpits.

  ‘My kitty has lost all her fur, thanks to you, now come over and stroke her!’ she demanded.

  Remus found the combination of her womanly underarms and her now prepubescent-looking labia very erotic and his manhood stood to attention.

  He was finally on the street, headi
ng towards his favourite South Indian restaurant; he had acquired a taste for banana leaf thali. He was about to enter when a hand restrained his arm. He turned to face a rather elderly portly man with a beard and turban. He now knew enough about India to recognise him as a Sikh. ‘I need to talk to you, I see from your aura that you have special healing powers,’ the man’s face looked genuine.

  Remus was intrigued; Jeffrey had mocked his healing skills, especially after the Popa Jigga fiasco. ‘Look, I want breakfast,’ Remus protested.

  ‘My name is Baba Jan Singh,’ the Sikh introduced himself; ‘Singh comes from the Sanskrit for lion.’

  Now Remus was hooked, ‘Lion my name too but I need eat.’

  ‘You eat, I talk, you buy me one tea, that is all,’ the Baba smiled. They sat at a table at the very back, Remus ordered his thali and two chai; he was getting a liking for the sweet spiced Indian tea. ‘First,’ said the Baba, ‘look at me and think of a colour and I shall write on this paper.’ “Yellow” was the colour that came to Remus’ mind, the Baba wrote a single word on a torn scrap from his notebook and then screwed it up very small. ‘Hold this tight in your left fist,’ pressing the little ball into Remus’ hand. ‘As you must know, we never eat with our left hand in India.’

  ‘Same Africa,’ Remus beamed, ‘left hand, shit hand.’ The Baba continued unfazed, producing an old paper photo wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. Remus’ thali had arrived and he tucked in with true Indian dexterity, rolling the dhal, rice and vegetables into small balls and flicking them into his mouth.

  Baba had been sifting through the photos, careful to conceal the images from Remus. He selected three and laid them face-down flat on the table. ‘These three photographs will show you a glimpse of your future,’ Remus was more interested in the present and his thali and had ordered another papadum. ‘Point to the first photo,’ Baba commanded. As his papad had arrived and was in his right hand, he pointed to one with his left index finger, still holding tight to the paper scrap. The Baba turned over the photo, the papad shattered in Remus’ right hand!