On
our first trip outside the U.S. as a couple, K. and I followed our
shadows eastward into purpling saffron clouds, to India.
Delhi
appears around us as the plane touches down, materializing all at
once from the metallic blue haze. The instant the cabin doors unseal,
the air perceptibly takes on ten pounds. Neither K. nor I mentions
this as we are already fighting.
If
India is equal parts fever and dream, the former concentrates in the
nations capital.
I
begin sweating the very moment we step foot outside the airport and
do not stop for three weeks. Our friend A., who we have never met
before in person, appears in front of us the second we exit customs.
Twenty-four hours later we are sitting in his familys
bedroom in Noida, licking basmati from our fingers and singing Happy
Birthday to his
8-year-old son.
Though
our New Delhi hotel is billed four stars, we sleep on what seem to be
stacks of plywood made up to look like beds, and bathe with a bucket
that catches the cold water that leaks from the shower head. At
night, we step lightly past not-quite-live-in employees dozing on the
stairs out onto the roof, where the lights of the hotel reflect back
at us from the particulate in the air. The city is intoxicating, the
staff is cordial, the food is plentiful, and all are kind to us
but then, kindness is everywhere, especially here.
Putting
New Delhi at our backs, we ride into Jaipur in a taxi with a
permanent child lock and ride out on an elephant named Maya. I blink
and cannot see, the air is so choked with spices and the sky so dark.
My eyes are watering. The clap of fireworks echoes down from the
Rajasthani mountains, beyond the horizon of ancient fortresses. My
pupils adjust and marble walls rise sepulchral around us. I ask where
we are and someone mutters Bharat.
A tour guide announces that we are
standing in the
Taj Mahal, in Agra. I grab K.s
hand
and in the perfectly symmetrical palace we are the center of the
universe. She lets go and by the time I look up we are in a new
state, a new city, a new hotel, a new car.
A.
introduces us to a driver, who knows a rug maker who knows a
pharmacist and a barber and a travel agent and a tailor and a
constable and a saffron merchant as we ask for them. At one point
less than an hour after we tumble off a train and into the care of a
new driver, a new eloquent English-speaking Brahman smiling from the
passenger seat we express a remote interest in Indian
weddings. The guide, who we have known for less than an hour,
suggests that we come to Day 3 of his cousins
wedding this weekend. From Uttar Pradesh to Tamil Nadu we are passed
from one curator of memorable experiences to another so frequently we
almost forget to have vacation sex. Okay, not quite that oftenbut
we stay busy.
In
Cochin, a thousand miles south of where our day began in Maharashtra,
we check into a new hotel and instantly collapse into the bed. I am
drooling, generally sticky and damp. K. bursts into tears, physically
exhausted. I text our new driver to beg for time to rest, to nap, but
it is the middle of the day. He is already calling, hankering to know
how we plan to pillage the virginal afternoon, how he can aide us to
squeeze entertainment and experience out of every last possible
moment of our short stay in this most interesting place on the
planet. Where
to, sir? he asks
cordially even
though we are the same age. What
you like?
Chai
and nothing else swirls in my stomach as I pull myself onto my
elbows. K. wipes her eyes. So close to the Indian Ocean as
near as we have been since the unswimmable coastlines of Mumbai
I ask if he knows somewhere to get fresh seafood. Of course he does.
He is also a chef, when he is not a driver and tour guide. He knows a
place. Pick you up in ten minutes sir? Two hours? How about thirty
minutes? OK sir, see you in one hour. Ill
be waiting, forty-five minutes, sir.
We
peel the clothes off each other and get in the shower. The water is
gloriously hot. I stand under the rain for twenty minutes with my
eyes closed, fantasizing that I am just waking up from a nap,
full-bellied and dry, perhaps also rich and handsome. K. washes the
most recent flight from her hair, draws hearts in the glass as we
talk about the past few weeks, everywhere weve
been and the amazing and terrible things weve
seen and experienced.
Today,
a year on, it is still impossible for us to recall the unparalleled
majesty of India without also remembering the shawls and scarves we
wrapped around our faces to keep from gagging as we crossed over
streams and open sewers; the children pushing soggy cardboard aside
to surface in the lakes and rivers; the dark soot we sneezed into
tissues when either of us inevitably got sick. While we are careful
not to belabor the point in front of strangers, the ecological
travesties we have encountered every day here are impossible to
ignore, though we certainly try.
When
K. is done showering, I watch her get ready in the bathroom mirror
for another ten minutes. She is so beautiful and strange, all gold
and honey and roses in this land of mulethi and coriander and
cardamom. I laugh and when she sees she asks what I am laughing about
and I am so exhausted I just keep laughing and that is answer enough
for her to join in.
Our
bodies feel weighed down after only a couple weeks of the heavy air
here, but our hearts are light. We dress in fresh clothes.
We
take our time meeting the driver outside. No sooner are we seated in
the backseat than the doors open and we spill back out onto a
restaurant patio some blocks away, where fish wrapped in banana
leaves fall in front of us with rice and cucumber and kefir. Only the
silverware stays polished and untouched: We have not used a utensil
for 10 days. A stray cat appears at our feet and K. plucks the
eyeballs from the fish to feed to it.
When
we cannot possibly eat anymore, we pay the tab and ditch our driver,
who is napping in the parking lot. We head in the direction of the
coast.
In
a cartoon, K. and I would wrinkle our noses as we approach the water,
where dead things and inorganic matter splash up onto soggy shoals
that might once have been a beach. But instead we only look at each
other and narrow our eyes slightly against the gray mist.
Both
blonde and fair, we are an outstanding minority here, and seemingly
an anomaly far outside of a handful of landmarks. We are far from
alone on the boardwalk, and there is a statistically significant
possibility that we are being photographed or looked at during any
given moment. There is no doubt that this experience which we are
living now is singular and beautiful; but like most elsewhere we have
been since arriving in India, we must pause to consciously
recalibrate our presumptions of this scene in order to fully
appreciate its beauty.
A
cargo ship drifts past, pushing up a gurgling surf that leaves black
silt on the rocks beneath the pier.
While
K. and I are overtly conscious of the fact that we are only guests
here, moments like this the ones punctuated by gray waters
and heavy skies and unignorable environmental degradation are
a devastating pill for an American treehugger like me to swallow, and
one that has weighed guiltily on my heart as we explore the vast and
enchanting land. The personal tragedy is overwhelming: Trash is
literally everywhere.
We
know already that municipalities and countries across South Asia are
paid to dispose of some rich-world waste, which may be burned or
buried or forgotten in any number of ways on a macroeconomic scale.
But it had not occurred to me until we watched Maya the elephant pick
discarded plastic out of the way with her delicate trunk to pluck a
piece of sugarcane off the ground that the sacrosanct values of
environmental stewardship which I have always taken for granted might
not be quite so ubiquitous here.
When
I finally asked our driver why the issue seems to be so extreme, he
thought then answered proudly that there is not nearly so much
rubbish in the streets today under
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
as
there was before, sir. He hearkened patriotically to the sacred
Ganges River, a world heritage site which was briefly and at great
cost made swimmable one year for the pilgrims of Varanasi. As he said
this, without a wink of irony, he rolled his window up against the
hot fumes of a bus we were sharing a lane with. Besides, he added,
cracking the window again as we passed, that is not our concern.
The
toxic streams, the dense air, the trash these are the burdens
of a lesser caste, and (though he did leave this part out) certainly
not for visitors to judge. Someone else will pick up after you, he
assured us as he opened a pack of cough drops and tossed the wrapper
out into the street. Relax and enjoy yourself, sir.
At
the time, I shrugged and, pocketing my trash, turned my attention to
the amazing things unfolding around us every moment, at every turn.
But as we watch the sun set on the horizon in Cochin, a man to my
right finishes his bottle of water, caps it, and throws it directly
into the ocean. Nobody so much as glances at him twice.
I
am lighthearted with K. beside me, but I feel my thin blood begin to
boil at the sight of the discarded water bottle in the foaming surf,
bobbing and coalescing with a wall of plastics and textiles five feet
thick against the rocks below us. We are only guests here, newcomers
to this culture and its customs, but this must be unacceptable!
Surely there has to be some sense of wrongdoing for throwing a
plastic water bottle straight
into the
ocean even if
that is the way
things have been done here as long as drinkable water has been
available only from plastic bottles.
I
am about to say something loudly when a womans
voice calls from the direction of the setting sun:
You
guys are so cute!
I
blink, offended. Did
you see that? I say in
her direction
before I can help myself, but the stranger does not hear me over the
clap of the viscous surf.
You
are such a cute couple!
The
woman is in a tank top, seated next to a tall and dark man who, like
her, is gorgeous and looks to be around our age. Her long hair falls
in waves, and she brushes them out of her face before holding her
phone up to us.
Come!
She waves us over as we squint to see
the screen
against the foggy remnants of sunlight. Sit
with us!
Her
name, she tells us, is N. She has taken a selfie, and we are in the
background. Though I can say with certainty that we were having a
good time, this photo looks like every photo we have not been
prepared for this month: we look haggard and annoyed. I am frowning,
comical-looking in a red kurta. K. is flushed, glistening like a
jewel in the last of the day.
But
N. insists that we are the most attractive white couple she has met
this week in Kerala. Those are the words she uses.
I
ask who her partner is, and M. introduces himself as someone she has
only just met here fifteen minutes ago. For the first time in a
month, neither stranger calls us sir or maam.
Something buried deep in my social-monkey brain clicks on when they
ask what our plans for the evening are. My phone rings. It is the
driver, wanting to know the same thing. I pause, looking from K. to
N. to M. then back to K., and say that we are getting a beer with
some friends. K. lights up, and N. instantly hugs her. I look at M.
when I say this and he nods, smiling. Of course he knows a place.
Hours
or ages later we plop down in the backseat of the car again,
cathartic and already reminiscing about what feels like our first
real night out on this continent. The driver gets in and the city
begins streaking by today Cochin, tomorrow Munnar, Thekkady,
Alleppey. Once more, we are on the move, though neither of us can say
for sure towards what. In this place we live in the moment.
K.
touches the spot on her cheek where N. kissed her goodbye as she
laughs. I thumb the cigarettes in my pocket that M. and his cousin
rolled for us. If we have been floating through this vacation, we are
suddenly on cloud nine.
Is
this what they mean by contact
high? I am feeling more
lighthearted
than ever. It occurs to me that for all the people we have met here,
we have not made a single friend since A. whose company we were not
expected to pay for. Virtually alone but for each other, our
impressions on this beautiful and eclectic albeit polluted
place have become compounded as weve
rehashed them in beds and showers and tuktuks on our way across
India. As we toss our judgments back and forth rather than around,
our preconceptions have become exacerbated rather than recalibrated.
Though
we are happier than ever to be alone together, both K. and I have
forgotten the elation of making a new friend in a strange place. Our
misgivings evaporate. Of course there is litter here, but there is
also magic. Surrounded by new people, I am reminded tonight why I
have chosen this one to love.
In
a moment of bliss I ask the driver his name.
V.,
he
says then, when I dont
hear
him, corrects himself: Sorry.
V., sir. Is everything okay?
Yes
V., everything is fine. You know you dont
have to call me sir.
OK,
sir,
says the driver, rolling up his window
as we
approach the bridge.
Tony
is a remote worker and piano tuner who lives in the San Francisco Bay
Area with his girlfriend and a very vocal cat. He has traveled
extensively across the United States as well as abroad and enjoys
trying new food and reading on his apartment balcony during rainy
days. While his work has not been previously published (except for
ghostwriting), he frequently shares essays similar to this one for
free on his personal Substack, https://hammockhopper.substack.com.
