by Karan Bajaj
He turned around and left.
• • •
MAX TRUDGED THROUGH the packed ice to the village, the chill cutting through his bones despite his heavy coat.
A group of men and women huddled around a fire in front of a small open-air roadside restaurant. Next to it, a bare hut sold cigarettes and biscuits. Opposite it, there were more wooden houses with tin roofs. The village ended there.
Max knocked at the door of a house with a peeling sign reading Bright Hotel.
The tall, lean proprietor’s eyes widened at his request for accommodation. He showed Max a dark, musty room that had obviously not seen visitors in months. There was no water or electricity in the freezing room, but the owner made up for it with thick piles of blankets and two buckets of hot water. Max’s mood lifted. He had a bucket shower, snuggled into the blankets, and slept a little less restlessly now that he could at least see his destination one week after leaving New York City.
7.
Early the next morning, Max walked to the open-air restaurant with his backpack. He sat on a long wooden bench in front of the cooking area, huddled close to the warm stove, and watched the cook make Indian bread. The sun rose between the white, angular peaks of the mountains. Ruddy faces appeared on the streets outside, greeting one another, smiling in their thick, colorful clothes. The air filled with the fragrance of bread and milky tea. Max’s spirits lifted. The lone taxi owner in the village had refused to drive him farther up, but at least Max had made it to the Himalayas.
“Where are you from?”
Max turned around. Two Indian boys in their early twenties, all cheerful, impish grins and messy hair, sat on the table next to him.
“New York,” said Max.
“Awesome,” said the taller, more confident-looking one in perfect English. “I’m Omkara. I’m going to Cincinnati in three months.”
“Cincinnati is a dump. It’s nothing like New York,” said the other boy, short and squat with a half-Oriental, half-Indian face. “I’m Shiva, by the way.”
“I’m Max,” he said. “You are going to study? University of Cincinnati?”
Omkara nodded. “Fucking yeah. To study chemistry. I’m breaking bad. The shit I cook up in Cinci is going to be the bomb,” he said. He paused. “You’ve seen Breaking Bad, the TV show, right?”
Max shook his head.
“Dude, what kind of American are you? Everyone has seen Breaking Bad,” said Omkara. “You are tall, by the way, freaky tall. What brings you here? No foreigner comes here in winter. The Himalayas let no Yankees in in December.”
Omkara asked the cook to make him an aloo paratha, an Indian bread stuffed with potatoes. “And make one for Uncle Sam also,” he said. He turned to Max. “The parathas here are the bomb.”
“Are you guys from the area?” said Max.
Shiva nodded. “My village is close to here.”
“We go to engineering college in Rishikesh but drove up last night to take a break,” said Omkara. “Two months left for graduation, yet they persist in teaching bullshit, pretending like they are some great American university or something.”
Max stared at their black motorcycle jackets and thick biker gloves.
“You came up that road from Rishikesh on motorcycles? Not a chance,” he said.
The boys laughed. “We ride motorcycles better than we walk. That’s all we’ve done for four years in college. Up, down, up, down. Otherwise living in Rishikesh is more boring than watching you drink tea,” said Omkara.
“As boring as Cincinnati,” said Shiva.
“But how can you drive up that road at night? There isn’t a single streetlight,” said Max.
“We’ve done it a million times. It’s better. Roads are empty then. There are so many jerks driving in India that your chances are much better against the night than against another idiot driver,” said Omkara.
The parathas arrived. Max tore the hot bread into pieces and wolfed it down, the spicy potatoes warming him up.
“You eat like an Indian,” said Omkara.
Max laughed.
Omkara removed his black gloves and kept them on the table. A crazy idea struck Max.
“Can you ride up to Gangotri?” he said.
Omkara looked up. “Of course. We can go anywhere,” he said.
“Like right now?”
They nodded.
“But why would anyone go up there now?” said Omkara. “You can’t even get a cup of tea there. And the view is the same. Here, there, everywhere, just mountains and snow, what’s there to see? It’s not like we have girlfriends to show pretty scenery to.”
“Can you drive me up there now?” said Max impulsively.
Omkara stopped eating. He looked at Shiva, then turned to Max.
“I knew you were crazy when I saw you smiling by the stove,” said Omkara.
“Why do you want to go up?” said Shiva. “There is no one there now.”
Omkara answered on Max’s behalf. “That’s why, dude, that’s why. Americans love their space and me time and all that mindfulness stuff. You are a tribal. You won’t understand,” he said. “Let’s go, dude, we are up for it. Fucking yeah. What else will we do all day here?”
Shiva shrugged. “You can ride behind me so you have more space.”
Fucking yeah. This was really happening. He was going to Gangotri, and later he’d hike up to Bhojbasa where the Brazilian doctor lived. A shiver of anticipation went up Max’s spine.
• • •
“YOU HAVE TO get rid of more than half of that crap, though,” said Omkara, pointing to Max’s backpack after they finished eating. “Else you’ll both topple over in the first valley.”
Max hesitated. Every item in the bag was necessary. Knowing he would be hiking, he had scrutinized everything he had put in.
Omkara walked over and picked up the backpack. “What’s in it, Uncle Sam? You can’t need this stuff in a hundred years,” he said.
The three of them went through his backpack. Out went the yoga manual and the biography of Buddha he had picked up in the London airport, the diary, the pens, two hiking pants, three T-shirts, sandals, shorts, swimming trunks, thin socks, malaria pills, a small lock—everything that didn’t serve the purpose of keeping the body warm in the cold.
“There, that’s a decent backpack,” said Omkara.
It was half its original size.
Omkara picked up Max’s swimming trunks from the discard pile. He danced around, circling them in the air.
“I’m going swimming in the Himalayas, bitch,” he sang. “I’m divin’, I’m pimpin’ in the snow, bitch.”
Max shifted in his chair and tried to smile.
Omkara put the trunks down. “Did you think you’d swim with the yogis in the frozen Ganges?” he said.
“Are the yogis still up there?” asked Max, half interested, half wanting to change the subject.
“They are much higher up than Gangotri, but don’t disturb them if you go near their caves,” said Shiva.
“Why?”
“Yogis are very powerful,” said Shiva. “If you disturb their meditation just for taking a picture or out of curiosity, they may curse you. And a yogi’s curse lasts for seven generations in a family.”
“Don’t listen to his superstitious bullshit. I told you, he is a tribal,” said Omkara. “Go give the rest of your stuff to someone to keep safe before we head out.”
“I don’t need it anymore.” Max looked at the books and clothes. He felt lighter and freer. He asked the cook to take anything he wanted and give the rest away.
Omkara came over to Max and high-fived him. “You are crazy, dude, mad. That’s why we like you,” he said. “We are crazy too. Paagals. All of us.”
Max followed them to a shed behind the hotel. His pulse quickened on seeing the weathered black motorcyc
les with their low seats and wide engines. Royal Enfield Bullet. He’d never heard of the brand. Not that he knew anything about motorcycles except that they were the least safe way to get anywhere even on shiny American highways, let alone the nearly nonexistent road ahead.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine,” said Shiva, perhaps sensing his nervousness. He gave Max a knee and hip protector, an open-faced helmet, black glasses, and a balaclava to keep his head warm.
“See this stuff?” said Omkara, pressing his boots against the large spikes in Shiva’s motorcycle tire. “Antislip studs made in Norway. We bought them in a black market in Delhi. Fancy, eh? India shining.”
They mounted the motorcycles and roared away past the hotel, up the thin, icy asphalt road, toward one of the highest villages in the Himalayas. Max held Shiva tight, shutting his eyes, then daring himself to open them as Shiva skidded and turned, pulled the choke and pushed the throttle, dodging boulders and pinecones strewn across the potholed concrete road. All around them was a deep, silent ocean of white—pine trees blanketed with snow on one side, the frozen Ganges on the other, wispy fog on the valleys beyond, and a thick cover of clouds covering the early morning sun above. Sweat poured down the back of Shiva’s neck under the helmet despite the cold breeze. Steering the motorcycle through the slipping, gravely ice was hard work, especially with Max’s two-hundred-and-ten-pound frame behind him.
• • •
THEY STOPPED an hour into the ride in the middle of a silent valley. Bright purple flowers grew unexpectedly amid the snow-covered trees. They parked their motorcycles on a dry patch next to the cliffs. Shiva and Max sat down on a boulder on the roadside while Omkara screwed a spike into his motorcycle tire with a small drill.
“So why are you really going up to Gangotri?” asked Shiva, pouring Max a cup of hot tea from the thermos he kept inside his jacket.
His voice was a shout in the miles of silence around them.
Max took a sip of the spicy milk tea. A pleasant burning sensation seeped down his throat. “I’m going to hike up to Bhojbasa to meet a yogi,” he said.
“Why?” asked Shiva.
Max told him about his unexpected meeting with Viveka and his subsequent quest to find the Brazilian doctor. As Max spoke, the uneasiness he had felt since coming to India slipped away. Somewhere deep down, he knew he’d been right in coming here. He’d been living a shadow of a life. The dots were connecting themselves. If he kept pushing forward, he would penetrate the mystery of pain, suffering, and death.
“It sounds awesome,” said Omkara, who seemed to have heard every word Max had said despite looking completely absorbed with the motorcycle tire.
“What does?” said Max.
Omkara walked over to them. “Your life in New York,” he said. He sat down next to Shiva on the boulder. “How did your father die?”
Max was learning not to be surprised when people asked him deeply personal questions casually in India.
“He worked in a garment factory in the Bronx. His lungs collapsed,” said Max. He paused, thinking of the one time he had accompanied his father to the hot, dark warehouse in Kingsbridge where he worked. The windows were painted black, the doors shut tight. His father, taller than anyone around, was moving boxes, sweating and coughing, yet joking with short, dark men stooped over machine stations. “I was five years old so I don’t remember much. My mother said he was a good man. He didn’t drink much and was good with numbers.”
“You did well to go to Harvard,” said Shiva. “Your mother must have been proud.”
Max’s eyes watered suddenly. His mother had made Sophia and him practice their English in front of the mirror every night so they didn’t pick up her heavy accent. She herself had learned to speak English fluently over the years but had never learned to write in it. Each month at Harvard, he’d receive an envelope with a smudged ten-dollar bill from her. He had never refused her money even though his tuition was covered by financial aid and his expenses by his busing and dishwashing job at the dining hall. She had wanted to keep feeling useful to him. Max took a giant sip of tea from the thermos cup to stop his voice from cracking.
“I still don’t get it though. What are you really looking for?” asked Shiva.
Max hesitated. “Spiritual enlightenment, I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just started reading books like The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” said Max. “It says there is just one energy in the universe. Everything and everyone are just forms of it. When you get enlightened, you see that oneness everywhere, in everything. You realize that a human body—any body, for that matter—is just a temporary vessel for the energy to express itself so the body’s birth or death is inconsequential.”
“But what’s the point of knowing all this?” said Shiva.
“Have you seen anyone die?” said Max.
“My grandfather,” said Shiva.
“Did you see him take his last breath?”
Shiva shook his head.
“When I was five, the kids in my building locked a girl up in a car one night. I saw her blue face pressing against the car’s window the next day,” said Max. “A couple of days later, my father died in front of me. I’ve never forgotten either one. It’s strange to see someone die. One moment they are breathing and moving, and the next moment their bodies are heavy and solid, like stone. Their spirit is gone. It feels random, not like any kind of master plan. So the idea that you can reach some kind of a psychological whole with a permanent energy even if your body withers away gives more meaning to life, though I’m not sure I buy it quite yet.”
Max rubbed his cold, stiff neck and put his balaclava back on.
“You are on the right track,” said Shiva unexpectedly.
Omkara walked over to his motorcycle. “You are a fool to come here chasing these yogis,” he said. “They are all frauds.”
“Don’t say that. Are you crazy? Take that back or you will be cursed, fucker,” said Shiva.
Omkara kicked his motorcycle to a start and mounted it. Roaring forward, he raised his middle finger. He swerved dangerously. For one heart-stopping moment, Max thought he’d careen off the cliff, but Omkara put his hand down and balanced himself easily. The yogis’ curses didn’t seem to have hit their target. Omkara raised his middle finger again.
“This is what I think of your yogis,” he shouted, zooming ahead.
Max and Shiva got up from the boulder and walked over to their motorcycle.
“Ignore him. He’s a city boy from Delhi. He hasn’t seen any real yogis,” said Shiva.
They followed Omkara, quickly catching up with him. The road turned steeper. The motorcycle decelerated and swerved, then steadied again under Shiva’s able driving. Soon the asphalt ended and a gravelly dirt road began. For the next hour, Max concentrated on moving his body in sync with Shiva’s as he leaned right and left, forward and back, using the weight of his body to help navigate the hairpin turns.
• • •
AN HOUR AND A HALF later they stopped outside a small closed roadside restaurant halfway to Gangotri. The restaurant’s tin roof had caved in from the thick deposits of ice on it, and its door was blocked by a six-foot-tall block of snow. No one seemed to have entered it for months. They spread a tarpaulin from Omkara’s motorcycle saddlebag on the restaurant steps.
“How do the yogis get up to Gangotri in winter?” asked Max.
“They just walk through the mountains,” said Shiva.
Max stared at the blank white mountains surrounding him. He’d never be able to find his way to the guesthouse without a trail.
Shiva seemed to read his thoughts. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The trek from Gangotri to Bhojbasa is a joke. We call it a ‘ladies’ hike’ in these parts. It’s an easy, well-marked path. A tall, fit guy like you could be up and down in five or six hours, even qui
cker now that there is no one around.”
“Have you been up there?” asked Max.
Shiva nodded. “I didn’t stop at the guesthouse, though. I went farther up, where my uncle was meditating in a cave. Serious yogis live much higher up than Bhojbasa. You can’t get there on marked trails. Many curious people come here—this researcher from Glasgow University, that writer from Milan—the lower Himalayas are a total tourist trap. Yogis don’t want to be found so easily,” he said. “And higher up in the mountains, the locals respect that. Even if people want a yogi’s blessings, they’ll just touch the outside of the cave or the yogi’s footsteps in the snow and go. All this watching and taking pictures and gushing over exotic India is done only by foreigners and people from the plains.”
Omkara noisily opened a packet of cookies. “All over the world people are striving for progress,” he said. “Only in India can you live naked in the mountains like a caveman and have idiots ask for your blessings.”
“They aren’t cavemen,” said Shiva. “They’ve just realized sooner than all of us that man’s soul cries for the infinite in a finite world. That’s why nothing ever satisfies us.”
Omkara got up from the steps. “My soul cries for an end to your infinite stupidity,” he said. He walked over to where the motorcycles were parked and took out a plastic container from Shiva’s motorcycle’s saddlebag. He began refueling his motorcycle from the container.
“He really needs to watch his mouth,” said Shiva. He turned to Max. “You can never talk about yogis like that.”
“I won’t,” said Max.
“I’m serious.”
“I said I won’t.”
“Ever.”
“Jesus. Never,” said Max.
“Good. One of the yogis in the cave next to my uncle’s had kept his right arm raised for twelve years, not even bending it down while sleeping. Every moment of the day and night for twelve years, can you imagine that? My uncle told me that such practices—raising the arm and standing on one leg—train the yogi to treat his body with contempt so he can concentrate undistracted on the divine soul within,” said Shiva. “I’ll never forget how the yogi smiled when he saw me. His right arm was thin like the dead branch of a tree, just bone and loose skin on top, but his skin glowed like a lamp. It was freaky. A man like that, who doesn’t eat, who doesn’t sleep, who deliberately withers his arm away to bone, what can he not do? You can’t joke about things like this. Everyone in the mountains knows that.”