by Philip Roy
Then I found the roof rack and fastened it to the roof. Radji helped. This part would have been easier by myself but he was determined to help. Then we tied a wooden box to the rack and looked around for something shiny. Radji found a round tin plate about the size of a large pizza. One side was very shiny so we fastened it to the back side of the box. I let Radji do that by himself. I went into the sub to get some things for the trip. When I came back about an hour later, Radji was just finishing up. He had drilled five holes through the plate and box, fastened five nuts, bolts and washers, and filed the edges of the bolts smooth so that Seaweed wouldn’t cut himself on something sharp. I was impressed. I called Seaweed, coaxed him down with the promise of dog biscuits, his favourite, and tossed the biscuits into the box. Seaweed hopped onto the car, took a peek into the box, looked at me, then jumped in and gobbled them up. We were almost ready to go.
Melissa said that there was a good tent in the rafters of the garage, and that we should take it down, set it up in the yard and air it out. Well, we found it, Radji and I. It was heavy and full of dust. We slid it sideways (after checking it for snakes) and it fell onto the floor with a bang. We picked it up by its corners, dragged it outside and unfurled it. It smelled strange, like the really old smell of an afternoon party, which was probably what it was. But it was a good size. We also found sleeping mats, and Melissa had washed sheets for them. We were ready to go.
The Jaguar was a bossy-looking car on the road and Melissa was a bossy driver. But that was a good thing in India. The front made a face almost like a real Jaguar and I kind of imagined that it warned other cars to get out of the way or it would eat them up! Melissa had obviously learned to drive in India, had driven there all her life, and drove just like the rickshaw drivers, squeezing into every empty space on the road within an inch, even as we raced past cars going in the opposite direction.
It was crazy, really, and yet it is amazing what you can get used to. I sat in the passenger seat, which was on the left side because it was a British car, and Indian drivers drive on the left. Radji sat in the back with Hollie. They had lots of room to stretch out. Radji took out the chess set immediately and we started to play. He would make a move, pass the board to me; I’d make a move and pass it back. Then he would study it for a long time. Because it was a magnetic board the little pieces never fell off.
For the first couple of hours I kept sticking my head out the window to see Seaweed’s head sticking up and his beak pointing into the wind just like the little silver Jaguar on the front of the hood. He appeared to be enjoying himself. But it was hot, hotter than the hottest day I had ever experienced in Newfoundland. I loved it. Heat like this grows on you. It feels like a hot brush on your arm and a warm towel around your head. Your hands are always warm. Your feet are always warm. Your breath is damp. If you stick your tongue out in the sun it gets hot.
But there was no air-conditioning in the Jaguar, that was for sure, and so the windows were all the way down and the air rushed through like an industrial fan with a constant soft roar. And with the air came the smells of the countryside, dry smells mostly, and occasionally the smells of fruit or flowers or the woods.
We were not the only pilgrims on the road. In fact, there were more pilgrims than anybody else, according to Melissa. They came in buses, trucks, Jeeps, cars, and on foot. Mostly they were squeezed together in small buses like sardines in a can. Inside a bus that was built to carry twenty-five people you would see fifty or sixty or more! They were pressed against each other in cramped spaces without air-conditioning. It looked really uncomfortable. Why were there so many pilgrims? Why did they go to so much trouble to visit a few temples? I asked Melissa. She wiped the dust and sweat from her brow and answered without taking her eyes off the road. “This is India. Pilgrimages are part of the Hindu faith. Every day there are millions of pilgrims on the roads. It never stops.”
I nodded and stared at a bus ahead of us. The buses on pilgrimage were all painted bright colours, like pink, purple and yellow. They looked like chewy candy or bubblegum or something like that. It was kind of strange but you got used to it. Some of the trucks were painted like that too, even big dump trucks carrying rock and gravel—they had pink and yellow and purple flowers painted all over them with what looked like house paint. And some vehicles were painted like a kaleidoscope; they glowed with brightly coloured shapes. It was pretty weird. In Canada, vehicles were just vehicles.
I was watching the bus up ahead. My eyes were resting on it rather sleepily as it tossed and pitched on the bumpy road, almost like a dory in a choppy sea. I was thinking it was bouncing a little too much for a bus on a highway, but I was too lazy to think anything more about it. You became used to the crazy driving in India after a while, as if vehicles were about to fall right off the road any second. And then, that bus did.
For a second I thought it was just my imagination, but it wasn’t. Cars ahead of us pulled off to the side of the road, and so we did. Melissa asked me, “What happened?”
“A bus just went off the road.”
“Are you sure? What bus? I didn’t see a bus.”
“It was up ahead of us, a really colourful bus, packed with people.”
The traffic slowed to a crawl, but some people just refused to stop.
“I’m going to go and take a look,” I said. “Radji, stay here with Hollie.”
“Can I come?”
“No. You’d better stay here.”
“Should I stay?” Melissa asked, confused.
I nodded. “Yes, please.”
I climbed out of the car and shut the door. Radji stared out at me kind of desperately. He didn’t want to be left alone with Melissa. I didn’t know what he was so afraid of; I was coming right back. I started down the hill. There was a cloud of dust in the air where the bus had slid down the bank, hit a rock, turned upside down and slid a little further on its roof. I felt queasy in my stomach. I sure hoped nobody had been killed.
Near the bottom of the hill a crowd of people had gathered. Some had come out of their cars, like me, and some had crawled out of the upside-down bus. People were yelling but no one was screaming hysterically. I was glad for that. There were a couple of men who seemed to be in charge. They were checking everybody over. About two dozen people were sitting on the ground holding their heads or arms or stomachs. One of the leaders was finding people to take injured passengers to a medical clinic. When he saw me he asked me, “Do you have a car?”
“Yes, we have a car.”
“Do you have room to take someone to the clinic?”
I thought about it. The Jaguar had such a big back seat I figured we could probably take two people comfortably if we shared the front. “We can take two,” I said.
He turned and made a sweeping gesture to two men. I went over and helped one of them to his feet. Another man helped the other and we started slowly up the hill. They were stiff and shaken up but seemed okay otherwise. Probably they were in shock. It’s always a good idea to get checked out by a doctor anyway.
We went up the hill very slowly. When Melissa saw us coming she got out of the car and came to meet us. She helped lead the men to the back seat, but when they saw Radji in the car, and Radji was wearing that guilty look, they wouldn’t get in. I couldn’t believe it. Were they serious? The two men started looking around at the other cars.
“Get in!” Melissa said firmly. “We’ll take you to the clinic.”
They didn’t answer her but looked anxiously for another ride, then moved away from us. I stood and watched them go. It was absolutely incredible. I wondered: would they rather have died than ride in the car with an Untouchable? Maybe.
We climbed back in the car and pulled onto the road again, slowly.
“Is everyone okay?” Radji asked.
I turned around and stared at him. He looked so innocent. “Yup. They’re fine. Probably just bruised.”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE FURTHER FROM THE coast we travelled, the drier t
he ground became. We drove through hills at first, with woods everywhere and pretty pink and grey temples. And there were monkeys in the trees. Then we reached a plateau, and the woods became thinner and drier. Some of the hillsides were nothing but rock, and there were strange-looking boulders lying around as if giants had carried them there and dropped them because they had become too heavy to carry any further. India was the most fascinating land to explore, it really was. You could never get bored looking out the window of a car or a train.
Melissa was a tireless driver. I was impressed. She drove with both hands on the wheel and kept her eyes on the road the whole time. When she talked, she didn’t look away from the road. She drove in two-hour chunks, exactly, then pulled off the road for a fifteen-minute rest and picnic. We opened the boot of the Jaguar and shared a snack of cookies or bread, with water, lemonade, or iced tea. It was nice. Hollie would whine every time Melissa started to slow down and would jump out and run all over the place. And Seaweed would come too because he was always in a picnic mood.
On the first day, we drove almost as far as Wardha before calling it quits. We drove into a large field where other travellers had already set up tents. Twilight was in the air; you could see it and smell it. Twilight in India smelled like water—the smell it makes when it is evaporating. If you closed your eyes you could almost imagine it smelled like fog, but it wasn’t fog.
We chose a spot to pitch the tent, not too close to the other campers, and not too far away. Melissa felt it was safer to stay close to other travellers but I didn’t want to be right next to anyone else. We pulled out the tent, set it up, took out our sleeping mats and put them inside. We had thin sheets but not sleeping bags. It was too hot for sleeping bags. The tent had mesh windows to keep mosquitoes out. Melissa warned us not to leave the tent flap open even for a second or the mosquitoes would come in and we’d never get any sleep. It wasn’t the mosquitoes I was worried about.
Inside the tent we sat on our mats and Melissa served us cold rice, veggies and fruit. We washed everything down with water. Darkness fell quickly and we could see lights in the other tents and hear sounds of families talking and monkeys chattering and even the howling of dogs in the distance. They sounded like coyotes but they couldn’t be, not in India. We were going to pass animal reserves tomorrow and the next day, where there were tigers, leopards, wild boar and elephants. Melissa said that maybe we could see some tigers if we got an early start the day after tomorrow. Sounded good to me. How I wished the road was just a river and I was in my sub, and could moor it wherever I wanted and explore to my heart’s content. There were so many things to see here—temples, caves, animals, strange geographical formations, cities . . . yet we were travelling with a purpose. We were on a pilgrimage.
After eating, we washed with wet facecloths, lay down on our mats and let the warm air brush over us. Soon Radji was talking anxiously in his sleep and Melissa was snoring like an elephant. Hollie buried his head beneath my feet and Seaweed bedded down like the Buddha at the door. I didn’t want to leave Seaweed outside with dangerous animals in the neighbourhood.
The second day was like the first. The Jaguar roared along the ridges of a land growing drier all the time, yet still treed and populated with people, monkeys and birds. I hadn’t seen a single bird of prey yet but they must have been out there somewhere. I was sure Seaweed was watching for them. He seemed to enjoy riding on the roof. It gave him the wind he would normally only have at great heights and he didn’t have to work for it. Not that he was lazy; he wasn’t.
But it was a sleepy ride—this hot, hazy, dry landscape would surely have been a desert if you took the trees away. I didn’t know how Melissa could stay awake and be so alert, but she did. She reminded me of my grandmother and grandfather in that way: they did whatever they had to do, no matter what. Of course Melissa had slept, as had Radji. I hadn’t. I had spent all night listening to them cry and snore.
I was drifting in and out of consciousness as we rolled along, lost in my imagination and daydreams, even as Radji and I kept a game of chess on the go, however slowly. And then, from the backseat came two little words and my sleepy world was rudely awakened. They were just two words—joined together into one word—that I never thought I’d ever hear Radji say. I even thought it was a poor attempt at a joke on his part. But it wasn’t. He said the words softly but sort of how a bank robber might speak during a robbery. “Checkmate!”
“No way!” I said, even before I looked at the board. There was no way it was checkmate. It couldn’t be. I would have seen it coming. I jumped up and turned around. “Let me see.”
Radji handed me the board. He was so excited he was breathing heavily, but that was the only sign that he was excited because he was hiding it so well. I stared at the game. I was certainly in checkmate but it didn’t make sense. I knew I would have seen it coming. I wasn’t that sleepy.
“Checkmate,” Radji said again in case I hadn’t heard him the first time.
I stared at the pieces. Something wasn’t right. “Ahhhh . . . there it is! My knight wasn’t there; it was here!” I leaned over and showed Radji where my knight was supposed to be. He looked at the board, looked at me, and shook his head. “No.”
Oh! The little monkey! “Yes, it was! It must have gotten moved. Maybe you bumped it by accident.”
“No.”
“Well, maybe it got bumped when the car hit a pothole.”
“What’s a pothole?”
“A hole in the road.”
“No.”
I stared at Radji and he stared at me. The thought that maybe he had cheated started to run through my head but I chased it out. I did not want to think that Radji would have cheated. I really didn’t believe that he would.
“Checkmate,” he said again, and he was breathing harder.
I stared at this ten-year-old boy in the backseat with such mixed feelings. I desperately did not want him to beat me at chess, especially after only a few weeks of playing, and being almost seven years younger than me. That was one part of me speaking inside and it was pretty loud. The other part didn’t want to take the win away from him when he had been working so hard for it and loved it so much. I really felt that the fairest thing to do would be to start the game over again. That’s what I would have said to someone if I found myself in Radji’s shoes. But I wasn’t in his shoes. And . . . it was just a game, well, it didn’t feel like just a game. But it was.
“Okay. You’re right. No quarter.”
“No quarter,” Radji said. And then, to Melissa, as if she hadn’t heard the whole thing, he said, “I won.”
“Did you?” said Melissa, and then she made a big fuss over it. I took a deep breath and stared out the window. Radji set up the board to play another game right away. There’s nothing like winning your first game to inspire you. We played four more games before stopping for the second night, and I never showed Radji any quarter whatsoever, kind of hoping that it would prove to him that there must have been a mistake, but his confidence in his win was never shaken. I had to accept it.
There were brightly painted buses in the field where we camped the second night. There was music and singing in the air and the smell of barbeques. Radji, Hollie and I wandered over to take a peek. The pilgrims were sitting on the ground: one group for men and one for women. Fires lit up their faces. The singing was soft and happy. Radji stood and stared for a long time. He had such a wistful look on his face that I couldn’t help watching him. He wanted so much to belong to a group or a family.
We ate and went to bed. I was exhausted but Radji’s crying out and Melissa’s snoring kept me awake again for a long time. Then, when I finally did fall asleep, I fell into the weirdest dream. We were at sea. There had been a great storm and all the fish and creatures of the deep had come to the surface to see what it was like. Sea creatures were swimming, slithering and crawling closer to the sub but Seaweed was chasing them away. Radji was in an open dory on the other side and he was drifting and crying.
I wanted to go after him but the sub wouldn’t work. Then Hollie jumped into the sea and swam after Radji, and I yelled after him. The next moment, Melissa was tugging at my shoulder and calling in my ear. “We must get going if you want to see the tigers.”
Tigers? I raised my head. Oh, yah. We were not at sea; we were in India. Cool.
Chapter Twenty-two
THE TIGER STEPPED OUT of the bushes and walked up behind the Jeep while everyone was looking towards the front. Then someone turned and saw it and let out a raspy cry that sounded like a rooster. There were ten of us crammed into the customized Jeep. Everyone turned around and watched the tiger cross the road. Halfway across, it stopped, turned, and looked at us. It opened its mouth into a gigantic yawn. Then, it shut its mouth, licked its lips and finished crossing the road. Everyone was so stunned it had come so close to us that no one even thought to take a picture. It was really beautiful, surprisingly tall, and so long! Its fur was colourful, almost hypnotic. I tried to imagine a time when tigers had roamed all over India, as wolves had once roamed across Canada. Now, there were almost none, except up north. So many people, crowding out the worlds of other creatures. Why were humans so destructive to other creatures? I looked at Radji. Why were they so unfriendly to their own people?
We also saw trees full of monkeys, a flock of interesting-looking birds, and two wild boars that ran incredibly fast. But it was the tiger that captured our attention. It was such a powerful and mysterious animal. I would never forget the look on its face as it yawned, as if it were saying, “I could run over there and eat you for breakfast but I don’t think I will bother right now.”
It was a two-hour ride in the Jeep for a thousand rupees, which Melissa had generously paid, then we climbed into the Jaguar and got back on the road.