by David Pugh
Chapter 35: Night Hawk Down
Molefi Bankaketse’s Diary, Gaborone Hotel, Botswana
‘A letter for you, Mr Molefi,’ the Indian waiter handed me an envelope with a UK postmark.
I wasn’t too surprised; I had been using this bar as my office for several years now and could be found here every night. I was drinking somewhat less; I had given up my trademark drink, “Good Old Tassies and Coke”, the Coca Cola was damaging my health and a litre and a half of neat Tassenberg wine a night wasn’t likely to do much hurt. I studied the handwriting, “Mr Molefi, c/o The Gaborone Hotel, Gaborone City, Botswana, Southern Africa”, it was an uneducated hand. I was fortunate to have attended one of the UK’s finest public schools and was taught how to form an exquisite Copperplate script. Alas, schools today think good handwriting is unnecessary, as Copperplate is a preloaded Windows font, lessening the beauty of the art of character formation. This hand was that of an African, West African I’d guess, as the script derived from an English handwriting textbook, which was found in schools from the 1950s to the 1980s. I’d guess the hand holding the pen was of Ghanaian or, God forbid, Gambian descent but I am not Sherlock Holmes.
I opened the correspondence carefully with a needle sharp stiletto. I’d never been the beneficiary of a letter bomb but there is always a first time. I am not a very popular man and due to the extreme nature of my work, I have acquired many people who would like to see me dead. I take pride in my work but alas I sometimes question the morality of it, hence my nightly knock out of two bottles of Tassies. It suppresses my dreams, which I wouldn’t go so far as calling nightmares, just recurring imagery of the night in Somalia that changed my life. I killed three men in cold blood, as the thriller writers say. It had been a long day in Hell, I had witnessed a fellow officer in the Peace Corps hacked to death by a mob trying to get into our barracks and claim asylum from anywhere that wasn’t Mogadishu 1993. That evening, three local carpenters were howling at the barrack gate’s two sentries, so Major Bankaketse went to calm the situation. Breaking point is a term often bandied around in most offices, at some time or other, but my office was in the Somalia of the 1990s. All I saw were three baboons spitting and swearing at me that they had not been paid for some military maintenance work. The three baboons’ screeches got louder, they rattled the gate bars. I loosened the safety catch of my machine pistol, ever so lightly touched the trigger, the baboons fell silent and three young men lay dead on the ground. The incident was hushed up, my father was a Tswana government minister and what were three more dead niggers in the Valley of Death? I could not hold down any job after that night, my father gave me a weekly allowance, which I shared with my good friend Tassenberg, and I eventually decided to become self-employed. I do a job which fate has thrust on me; I remove people who cause trouble for my benefactors.
There was no letter bomb this time, just a slip of paper and two photographs, one was of a black dreadlocked smiling beast, the other a photo of a couple I had met a year or two ago in this very bar. In fact I’d had my hand in the lady’s drawers, in the corridor outside the ablutions here, when her husband interrupted us.
‘Would you be so kind as to leave us, old chap,’ I requested, ‘can’t you see the lady is enjoying herself?’ She was on, I think, her third orgasm.
‘She has a taste for the black boys, I’d say,’ I smiled.
The lady looked embarrassed, I extricated my wet fingers and the three of us returned to the bar. After my second round of Tassies and Coke, I regaled them with my Somalia story. I’m not sure their look was that of a new respect for “the town drunk” or total loathing. They were planning an expedition into the Kalahari; they had been in touch with the witch, Andrea Hardbattle, defender of the San Bushmen, horrid little aborigines. Her brother was an activist and had founded the First Peoples Movement, battling for equal rights for the Neanderthals. The Tswana government wanted him removed, fortunately for them he died from a very sudden onslaught of lymphatic cancer in 1996. Now, now, I’m guessing what you may be thinking, don’t go there! There are enough Bob Marley conspiracy theories surrounding his cancer. I warned the couple who were travelling to meet the Hardbattle woman, that if someone were to inform the government of their plans, they could expect a meeting from the Secret Police. I offered to accompany them, totally free of charge, just my accommodation and expenses, along with the privilege of completely removing the lady’s undergarments and snacking on her hair-free pie. I told them I’d wait for them on the 10am bus to Ghanzi next morning. The miscreants left at 8am, understandably I was not pleased. Now, here they were back in my life, along with this black fellow, the same black Gambian chappy, I guess, the lady told me she was fucking. I laid the two photos side by side on my table and read the brief note.
“It would suit me if these three met with a fatal accident. Name your price. Contact details, back of envelope.”
Chapter 36: The Song of Suliman: A Beer at the End of India
The three friends were on the plane to Delhi, courtesy Bob Jatta’s debit card. ‘You look different this morning, friend Remus,’ David Marat ventured. ‘Last night, I feel something, have no words for, maybe power?’ Remus’ face was almost radiant.
Antoine piped in, ‘He shagged Yangzom, I saw them on the way to the toilet!’
This line was actually spoken in French, but I do not have the mastery of the language to give the words impact.
‘You lucky bastard, Remus, we’d have both liked to have visited her garden.’
Antoine nodded his full agreement, ‘Tell us all, mon amie.’
‘Don’t have words,’ Remus stated flatly, ‘like seeing God.’
‘Well, I guess we’ve all used that line more than once,’ David laughed, ‘in a day or two you’ll be looking for the next spiritual experience.’
‘Maybe our friend here has begun his transformation into the sadhu in the photograph?’ Antoine continued in French. They both looked at the still beaming African face.
An hour or so later they were at New Delhi Railway Station.
‘Where do we start?’ asked David Marat; Remus did not have a clue.
‘At the bottom,’ Antoine suggested, ‘Kanyakumari, the very tip of the subcontinent.’
‘So,’ said David, ‘let’s go have beer at the end of India.’
Remus was more his old self; the three linked arms and danced their way upstairs to the tourist train ticket counter.
David had booked a small seaside cottage in Kanyakumari, through the services of Tamil Nadu Tourism. They were a little apprehensive about the proximity to the sea, as Kanyakumari had been hit badly by the Tsunami of Boxing Day, 2004. When they arrived at the tourist complex they were impressed by the view of the 95ft Thiruvalluvar statue on an island out at sea. They later spoke to a man who witnessed the tsunami hit, the wave came up to the statue’s shoulders. He said that the worst physical effect of the tragedy was the grit in the water, which lacerated the survivors’ eyes, causing permanent damage. Their hotel complex had a bar, serving Zingaro beer; Antoine estimated that this was probably the most southerly bar in India, a good reason to order more beer to celebrate.
Remus Jallow, David Marat and Antoine Gruber had done the Gandhi Memorial and the Vivekananda Museum, which for one rupee shows you the life’s travels of the guru, in words and pictures, in what feels like real time. Remus had received no signs in Kanyakumari from his mysterious counter self. Their next evening found them on the platform at Madurai, with a reservation for another Hotel Tamil Nadu, and they arrived fifteen minutes before the crowded bar closed. David and Antoine had been looking forward to seeing the magnificent painted towers of the Meenakshi Amman Temple. Next morning they eagerly set off down the street to the temple at the heart of the town, what appeared to be a medieval siege tower loomed in the distance, spookily impressive but rather menacing. All twelve gopurams were covered or half covered in scaffolding, as part of a sixty-year redecorating plan, which would take a total of six years to comp
lete. They could at least see the legendary Thousand Pillar Hall and the bazaar inside. The gods were not smiling on them that day; as they were going through the temple security gate, a policeman stopped them and shouted,
‘No shorts, no lungis!’
None of them were wearing a lungi, the male wrap around cloth, knotted at the waist, but Remus was wearing cut-off military pants, which was obviously going to offend the gods.
Outside the temple were several tall dreadlocked dark-skinned Tamil sadhus, Remus inspected each one but found no twin. Had Remus found his doppelganger, he wasn’t quite sure what he would say to him or whether indeed they would share a common language. At the top of South Veli Street they passed an anonymous-looking bar; an amazingly tall waiter, named Shakar, with a huge African smile beckoned them in to a veritable beer palace.
David and Antoine nudged Remus, ‘It’s him; he is the spit of you!’
Shakar eyed Remus, ‘Wow, you could be my brother,’ he said in very serviceable English.
David Marat asked him, ‘Do you have any advice for your African brother here?’
‘Oh yes,’ beamed Shakar, ‘try a bottle of Black Knight Beer; it is the local brew.’ Smartly dressed they were allowed into the Meenakshi Amman Temple the next day, and it was all that David and Antoine had expected, a vast cavern of spiritual investigation. The two French speakers spent most of day in and out of the many shrines, while Remus stayed in the company of the temple elephant. We have no elephants in The Gambia, so Remus was very happy to talk with this one solitary creature but sad to see that for most of the day he was chained by his hind leg to the floor. Emotionally drained by about 7pm and no sign of Remus’ double, they found some secular relief in Shakar’s bar, to say farewell to Madurai, as they were catching the 01.45am Rameswaram Express.
Chapter 37: The Gregory Girl
The Testament of Aboboulaye, Jatta Enterprises, London
‘Listen, Molefi, I’m going to briefly fill you in on my situation with these three,’ I indicate a wall of photos of Mr and Mrs Dharma and my fool of a boyhood friend, Remus Jallow.
‘I am sorry, I didn’t know we were such good friends, Mr Jatta,’ the bastard is going to push me, ‘be good enough to address me as Mr Bankaketse, I am a professional.’
I should show him the door, but the man is supposed to be very good at arranging accidents and encouraging people to contract fatal diseases. Besides, I’m surrounded by clowns, which should teach me not to hire former friends and family members. ‘Very well, Mr Bankaketse, I am in the process of completing a building for the entertainment of high class clientele in Bakau, The Gambia. Bakau is near to Fajara where the foreign embassies are located…’
‘I know that,’ the bastard interrupts me, ‘my father was a minister in the Botswana government; I travelled with him as a child and have visited The Gambia.’
‘In that case you won’t need any topographical details, so I’ll continue…I wish to gain control of an adjacent property, which currently has the status of some hippie commune, the Happy Hippo Hostel Hotel, known locally as the 4H. This little property would be an ideal location for my sophisticated nightclub goers to escort their female or male companions, of any age, for some horizontal leisure, in crude terms a short-time knocking shop. The bitch of an owner, whom you are familiar with, won’t sell to me. I have even suggested that my boyhood friend and employee, Remus Jallow, who she has been infatuated with for several years, marry her and by Gambian law gain control of the 4H. There is one obstacle in the way of that plan, she is still married to the itinerant wanderer we both know as Jeffrey Dharma. I foolishly sent Remus to India to persuade his brother to grant a divorce or failing that, arrange a fatal accident. Remus does not have your expertise in this field and worse the imbecile has not replied to one of my communiqués. I have furnished him with a bank account and debit card for his expenses, which he will soon find to be frozen.’
‘I suggest that you cut off your associate’s income immediately, let him survive as he may in India and rid yourself of the man,’ the Tswana puts in, ‘Also, I do not understand, why you haven’t terminated Sylvia Dharma’s contract with existence?’
‘Of course, I knew you would ask this question,’ I relax my composure; this is going to be embarrassing for me to admit.
‘Tell me sir, are you at all superstitious?’ this is awkward, ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘Oh sure,’ the man smiles, ‘I am looking forward to Saint Peter inviting me through the gates of Heaven, praising me for all my good works, towards the betterment of mankind.’
‘Sir, are you completely mad?’ he finishes.
‘Wait,’ I’m not going to let him score points against me, ’I call myself a Muslim, for my mother’s benefit, I have no use myself for the outdated and bloody desert ideology.
‘I do not know how we Africans bought into these foreign mumbo-jumbos that they dropped on us and now I am coming to the crux of my problem. We are Africans; we have the ancient rituals and spirit worship of our ancestors, a sacred jungle inheritance.’
‘We are talking juju here, right?’ the Tswana is looking aghast, ‘You are an international businessman, you have money and power, don’t tell me you are afraid of someone sticking pins in your clay effigy?’
‘I know this seems stupid and naïve of me to admit to, but this belief is in my blood,’ I won’t let this man talk to me as if I am an ignorant jungle savage. ‘Unlike you, born into the wealth and privilege of a diplomatic society, I was born into a poor family in a forest village. The spirits of wood, sand, air, fire, water and stone were all around me. These spirits guided me to where I am today; they are not judgmental of whether my actions are right or wrong. They have been my guides; these are warrior spirits I am talking about. I believe that if you look after your gods, they look after you. This Chinese bitch has in her possession a small but deeply important reliquary of mine, in which are some items offered to my guardian spirits in return for the wealth and power I have today. Please understand, I swore an oath to protect these symbols of my bargain with my gods.’
‘Mr Jatta,’ I’m anxious that the man is about scoff at my superstition but no, ‘thank you for being open with me and I appreciate that you do believe what you say.’
‘We all construct a life for ourselves, sometimes on the shakiest foundation; if we believe that foundation is weak, we can fall.’
‘I happen to believe that as a Tswana I am superior to all other Africans, to back this I have the knowledge that my country is among the richest black nations in the world. I have knowledge; you have your belief, which I see is a truth for you.’ The man reaches out his hand to me, ‘Sir, you may call me Molefi.’
We shake hands and we both smile. ‘I can assure you, Bob, that I’ll get your Gregory out of this girl’s grasp.’
Chapter 38: The Song of Suliman: The Fireflies of Rameswaram
The three fell instantly asleep when they hit the second-class bunk, waking up at 5.00 am in time to see the train travelling across an amazingly low bridge, creating the impression they were travelling on the sea. The train terminated at Rameswaram, just 40km from Sri Lanka. The platform was swarming with flies that covered them as they paused to watch the dawn. David Marat had booked yet another Hotel Tamil Nadu right on the beach, though it was a little uncared for and peeling at the edges. A triple room was hastily swept out for them; as they were the only non-Indian guests. There was no air conditioning, so they lit a mosquito coil next to the open window, along with a few sticks of incense; they didn’t take into account the ancient dry and crumbling curtains. Antoine briefly woke up around 3am, to see fireflies drifting around the room but went back to sleep. In the morning the room smelled a little smoky and what appeared to be a dead black rat lay on the floor. It was the remains of the curtain; it had smouldered away to a row of curtain rings. Guiltily, they swept up the evidence and put the charred remains in a bin far from the property, hoping the hotel wouldn’t accuse them of stealing the cur
tains. I am told that Ramanathaswamy temple is famous for having India’s longest temple corridor, that stretches into impossible distances, where the sacred elephant can be sometimes glimpsed, blessing the many shrines with its trunk, but no African-looking sadhus.
Their next train was to Villapuram Junction and on to Pondicherry. Pondicherry is a former French colony and quite chic, with policemen in gendarme uniforms who speak French; it is also a beer lover’s Mecca, where almost every variety of beer brewed in India can be found, with no tax, as Pondi has a form of independence from the rest of India. Due to some age-old agreement with France, its citizens can reside here indefinitely and many do, taking advantage of 40-rupee beer and a Parisian-style bar culture.
Antoine had for years planned to visit Pondicherry and now had fallen in love with this unique French enclave inside India; he announced that he would be staying on indefinitely. His two friends were sad to part from their travelling and drinking companion, but Remus had not seen one sadhu in this town, so he with David’s help would continue the quest.
If you have dreams of being in the Indian antiquities and curio business, then Mamallapuram is apparently a good place to start. The seaside town is populated by generations of very high-standard stone carvers; if you want a statue of Ganesh on his laptop, this is the place for you. The town has a bit of everything, it’s Goa on the east coast with cheap rooms, a great Nepalese rooftop café; it has a well-preserved ancient city with free entry from dawn until dusk, a Hindu shore temple and a direct bus link to Chennai airport. They planned to just spend a couple of days here but ended up staying six, taking the 8pm local bus to the airport to catch David’s early morning flight. His Indian visa was about to run out, so he was flying to Paris to stay with his sister for a few weeks. They paid extra for their rucksacks but had to put them on their laps and then bail out with their luggage as the bus cruised slowly past the airport gates. Fortunately, they hit the ground without any broken ankles; it was a very Indian ending to this first part of Remus’ very Indian adventure.