by Bajaj, Karan
I was free. I am free, I repeated to myself, still in shock. A sudden thought struck me. There was only one forest indicated in the Cambodian map, which meant that this was the forest that bordered Thailand. After months of darkness, I could see a tantalizing ray of light in the distance - elusive, but suddenly attainable. I could escape, I thought with sudden resolve. But first, I needed to get out of sight. Slowly, I picked myself up and began to wade towards the bank - and fell in the water.
Come on, Nick, you can do this.
I picked myself up again - and fell. Again and again, I tried and kept falling. I began to cry in frustration. Just months ago, I used to run ten miles a day at soccer practice; now, I couldn’t even muster the energy to walk three feet.
Those bastards could come back any moment.
Think, boy, think, I told myself. Mens et Manus, Mind and Hand - the MIT slogan. Use your mind if the body doesn’t listen. I summoned all my energy to get up again, and collapsed once more. This wasn’t working. I tried to drag myself out of the stream. Slowly, painfully, stumbling on the sharp-edged stones, I began to crawl my way to the bank, almost willing the Khmer Rouge lackeys to retrace their steps and put me out of my misery. With a last burst of effort, I dragged myself to the edge of the stream. I slipped out of consciousness when I reached the bushes.
I woke after an eternity, delirious and uncomprehending. I had missed the final examination at MIT because of soccer practice, I thought with a sinking sensation. Why were these dark, angry mosquitoes feasting on me in the soccer field? Coach, coach, I shouted, these plants are eating me. I tried to push the branches away, but there were so many of them, just so many of them… I slipped away again.
When I woke up next, the sun had risen.
Where was I?
You are in a forest in Cambodia trying to escape to Thailand, someone said.
What? I’m running late for an examination.
Remember the Khmer Rouge? Remember Cambodia? Boy, you need to get it together, don’t you?
Eat. Remember what Sam said? I eat anything that moves.’ Look around. Find something that’s moving.
I spotted a crab in the thick undergrowth and threw a stone at it. It scuttled away.
Easy, boy. Focus. Wait for the kill. Impatience has always been your downfall.
This time I waited for a crab to come near me, and picked up a larger stone. Crash. There, killed the bastard, I said triumphantly.
Now, light a fire.
I looked around for two stones and realized that my left wrist was hanging from my arm like a loose thread. How could I build a fire with one arm?
No problem. Just eat it raw.
Raw?
Yes. No seven-course meal awaits you here.
I retched, but slowly tore the poor sucker to pieces. I ate all the soft bits.
Good, now remember your father’s stories from his NDA days? Eat some grass to digest it.
Now, drag yourself to the stream and drink as much water as you can. Idiot, don’t stand like that. First, fasten your legs with those fallen branches for support. Good. Make them tight.
Get your bearings. Remember where the jeep came from? Remember the map from the time you first arrived?
Now boy, don’t get sad. Think of Ishmael, the Karma Yogi. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Triumph and disaster. You control nothing, your only duty is to escape.
Okay, now rest and then start walking west.
Yours is not to question, boy. Just walk. Avoid the dirt tracks, just walk through the brambles and the bushes, not much left of you to be torn to pieces. Change course only when you smell decomposing flesh, because that means the Khmer Rouge are killing some villagers nearby.
Stop walking like that, will you? Be careful of the land mines Ishmael said are planted in the forest — stop whenever you see an aberration on the ground and change course.
Eat, drink, rest, walk, and stay out of trouble. How difficult is that, you spoilt son of a brave army officer?
I heard voices as I edged closer to a clearing with small huts, a herd of cattle, and a few men and women dressed in plain clothes walking around in what appeared to be a state of normalcy.
Who are they? I asked. Are we close to the Thai border?
I didn’t receive an answer.
I looked around frantically.
For five days and five nights, we had stumbled through the dense, bracketed forests together. Together, we endured the small, pointy bamboo plants that pierced the soles of our feet, and the angry mosquitoes that feasted on us at night. We stayed awake to beat away the snakes slithering in the bushes, and avoided the herds of trampling elephants in the distance. If it weren’t for him, I would still be sitting on the bank, cursing my fate, staring at the pieces of bone that were now my left wrist and obsessively rubbing away the dried, caked blood that stuck to my body like another layer of skin.
The voices grew louder as I approached the clearing cautiously, hiding behind bushes and tall grass.
They were speaking in Khmer, I suddenly realized. Why were they speaking in Khmer when this was the Thai border? The realization, when it struck, almost knocked me to the ground.
I had completely misjudged the coordinates. I had always been bad at reading maps.
Instead of walking to Thailand, I had probably walked in the opposite direction, to the northern end of Cambodia. I was probably back where I had started. I felt every bit of hope and life drain away from me.
The voices became louder and I saw three healthy looking men approaching the bush behind which I stood.
I didn’t try to hide. I didn’t try to run. I had nothing left to fight for any more. It was over. I had tried my best, but it wasn’t good enough.
The men spotted me and shouted in angry voices.
Maybe it was for the best, I thought. Who knew what horrors awaited me in Thailand?
They came running towards me.
Peaceful, unresisting, I allowed myself to fall, glad that it was finally over.
Monochromatic, multi-hued colours, lights going in and out, an array of bald men parading in orange robes, no hunger pangs, no overpowering thirst. This is heaven, I thought - except for the excruciating pain in my arm. I drifted away, peaceful despite the pain.
More colours, the sweet smell of incense, a reassuring, low-pitched chant, cool and calm, no hunger, no thirst. Just the pain, no longer throbbing, but dull, aching, and grey. Please make it go away, God, and I will be completely at peace.
‘Can you hear me?’
I woke up with a start. A bald white angel with golden eyebrows dressed in splendid orange-brown robes was sitting next to me. God, the Almighty. Deliverance.
His calm face broke into a smile. ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked in English with a strong American accent.
I was alive, I thought abstractly. This wasn’t heaven but it would do just fine. ‘Where am I?’ I asked, my head still throbbing.
‘You are in a monastery in Thailand,’ he said kindly.
But I wasn’t supposed to be here, I thought. My guide had led me back to Cambodia.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
‘The man who was with me.’
‘They found you alone.’
I drifted away again.
‘Where am I?’
I was alive and conscious, lying on a wooden bed in a small, well-lit room with light blue walls. The bald American in orange robes was sitting next to me.
‘You are in a Buddhist monastery in the Rong Glua village on the Thai side of the border,’ he said.
I was trying to process this information when a sudden pain shot through my left arm. I reached out to grab it with my right hand. My hand hit the wooden bed.
‘The doctors had to amputate your arm,’ he said gently. ‘Gangrene had set in from the elbow down.’
I stared at him in disbelief. Just how long would this nightmare last, I wondered. It was a bloody vacation, goddamit. I knew I had made a mista
ke. But how long would I have to pay for it? My arm, I thought, my arm. No basketball, no soccer, no NASA. I was a cripple. Tears stung my eyes.
‘I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible you feel.’ He leaned forward and held my right hand. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, you are lucky to be alive.’
I looked at him, tall, broad-shouldered and erect in his flowing monk’s robes, both arms intact - and hated him.
‘We weren’t confident that you’d make it when the villagers at the border brought you here a month ago. You had lost a lot of blood, your body was badly bruised and cut, and you looked like a skeleton. They thought you were dead until you started mumbling. They brought you here because you spoke English and didn’t look Cambodian. The refugee camps on the border are well-intentioned, but so busy that individual attention is impossible.’
It came back to me. The villagers who I’d thought were Cambodians were probably Thai, and Khmer must be spoken at the border in the same way that Hindi is spoken at the Indo-Nepalese border. When we were in high school, Sam and I had once run away to Nepal to get stoned. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t been found by the villagers. I would rather be dead than be a cripple.
‘I am from Texas,’ he said. ‘I came here as a Red Cross worker, but became a Buddhist monk instead.’ He shook my right hand. ‘I am David, now Monk Dechen.’
‘I am Nikhil,’ I said. ‘I came from Boston on a vacation.’
It sounded unreal.
He patted my head, and I cried shamelessly against his arm.
‘Where is the man who helped me?’ I asked after a while, trying to pull myself together.
‘Who?’ he said with a puzzled expression.
‘There was someone in the forest who guided me to the border, otherwise I’d never have made it.’
‘They found you alone.’
How could he die in the forest when he seemed so confident? Why couldn’t I remember his name or his face?
‘Was it a voice that spoke to you?’ David asked.
I nodded, although I didn’t like the implication of his words. I wasn’t a lunatic. I didn’t have visions of God speaking to me.
‘You aren’t going crazy,’ said David kindly. ‘Many crisis survivors experience this third presence. I am not a psychologist, but from what I understand, the mind divorces itself from the body in situations of extreme duress when the physical systems shut down.’
It made sense. I was too fatigued to move even a step, yet I had managed to walk for five days without stopping or treading on a mine. For what, though? I wished I had known it would end like this. I would have allowed myself to slip into eternity.
‘Do you know the date today?’ said David.
I shook my head.
‘5 June, 1977,’ he said.
Sam and I had arrived in Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, just after our convocation at MIT. I had spent more than two years in that cell. What was my fault? What was Ishmael’s crime? What had she done, the pregnant woman who had been hacked to death in front of our eyes?
‘You are a survivor. A brave, brave man,’ said David. ‘The Red Cross estimates that nearly six million people have been killed since the Khmer Rouge took over two years ago. That’s a third of the Cambodian population. Can you believe that? A third of the population eliminated using methods that are nowhere as sophisticated as the Nazis’, as you well know.’
I recalled the shrivelled corpses of children in the countryside with vultures feeding on them. Madness, I thought, stark, raving madness.
‘Isn’t someone doing anything about it?’ I asked.
‘They have cut off all international ties completely, and frankly, no one cares. America is busy fighting a war with Vietnam, and Cambodia is too small an economy to matter to anyone else. Besides, there is just a handful of survivors who’ve escaped to tell their stories; most of the country is dying slowly of either starvation or the not-so-random acts of brutal violence in the fields.’
But it’s their country, I wanted to shout. They had something to do with it, or at least they were born there. What about me? What did I have to do with anything? Suddenly, I was reminded of Ishmael, smiling and dignified even in death, accepting his destiny with grace. He had helped me escape. He wouldn’t be complaining right now if he were me, I thought. He had given me a chance to live; if nothing else, I owed it to him to make something of it.
‘When can I get back to the US?’ I asked, my mind a confused jumble of thoughts.
‘As early as tomorrow, if you feel up to it,’ he replied. ‘There are flights every night from Bangkok to New York. We could arrange for you to leave for Bangkok tomorrow with someone from the monastery. The American embassy has a standing record of missing Americans and is likely to process your paperwork immediately. You could be on a flight late tomorrow or the day after.’
‘Yes, I feel fine,’ I said sharply. ‘I would like to leave as soon as possible.’
He nodded understandingly and I felt like a jerk. He had saved my life. He owed me nothing, yet I was speaking to him as if my foolishness in coming to Cambodia was his fault.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’
He smiled broadly. ‘No apologies required. You have taken this extraordinarily well. As I said, you are a very courageous man to have made it out of there alive.’
My missing arm began to hurt again. I looked at it in surprise.
‘It’s called a phantom pain,’ he said, noticing my reaction. ‘Soon it will get better as you… err… get used to it.’
As soon as I got used to being a cripple, I thought bitterly.
He stared at me. ‘You are at the right place to get the answers you are seeking,’ he said after a while. ‘Would you be willing to come with me for a discourse by the Maha-thera, the head monk of the monastery? You are lucky. We are inducting a few new monks today so he will give an overview of the Buddha’s teachings.’
Great, lucky again, luckiest bastard in the world, wasn’t I? Lucky to get a chance to hear a cheerful, well-fed monk in the pink of health tell me what an ennobling experience my suffering was. I didn’t want to be a noble person, I thought. I just wanted my arm back.
‘Like you, I could never understand why the innocent had to suffer. That’s why I left the Red Cross,’ David said as he helped me get out of bed and walk a few hesitant steps. The soles of my feet seemed to burn, and I grimaced in pain. Some suffering, I thought. Look at me. I didn’t even have an arm to balance my movements any more; if I fell, I fell.
‘Whatever your questions, the Buddha has the answers,’ he told me.
Sure, I thought, who better to understand my pain than a thirty-something prince in the throes of a mid-life crisis who abandoned his family so he could ‘find himself’. Today’s junkie was yesterday’s Buddha.
David laughed. ‘You don’t do a very good job of hiding your emotions. If you prefer to rest before your trip to Bangkok, please don’t feel obliged to come.’
‘No, no. I want to come,’ I said, suddenly ashamed of myself.
So later that day, I limped my way through the silent, well-lit corridors to the common room.
‘The first noble truth is this: All life is dukha.’
Despite my vow to keep an open mind, I felt a surge of irritation. What was I doing here, in the middle of these orange-robed, bald, stoned looking monks with impassive, content faces, listening to a phony Chink godman who had probably never seen the outside of a secluded monastery spout paternal homilies on the nature of existence?
Get me a man with an amputated arm or a man who sat for two years in his own faeces smelling his friend’s decomposing body - and I will hear him speak all day. But spare me this, I said silently to the fat, cheerful teacher, who looked ageless and radiant, nowhere near the eighty years of age David had said he was. I already know all life is suffering, in a way you will never know.
The forty-odd monks in the small room were listening in rapt attention. Despite the locatio
n of the border village, most were westerners. Red Cross dropouts or trust fund hippies, I thought uncharitably. Crest cleans your teeth in ten days; the Buddha gives you nirvana in ten days. Salvation or the Buddha will give your money back. Try next door at Walmart.
‘Contrary to popular perception, dukha is not just suffering,’ the teacher continued. I focused my attention on him again. Unlike the pastors at church, he stated his position untheatrically and calmly, without trying to convince or provoke.
‘Dukha in Pali also means uneasiness, disquietude, restlessness, a vague feeling of incompleteness that characterizes all life.’
I found myself getting just a little interested. A lifetime ago, when my troubles weren’t as concrete as a missing arm, I had occasionally felt that sense of vague, inexplicable dissatisfaction. It surprised me to hear it being articulated as such.
‘The origin of dukha is attachment - craving and clinging to emotions and experiences whose fundamental nature is to change, to be in flux. This is the second noble truth. We crave a simpler past, or a brighter future, without realizing that the loss of that past is inevitable, that the self which is seeking the future is itself changing.’
I had a sudden, surreal sensation that there was no one else in the room. He seemed to be speaking directly to me. He was right, I was clinging to my past. I was craving the happiness of a better time. What was that better time, though? When I was at MIT, I would think about the time Mom and Dad were alive; here, I was craving my time at MIT. If I ended up losing both arms, I would probably be pining for the time I had one arm. I know life changes, I thought. I understand it’s always in flux. But how do I rid myself of the burden of the past?