A while back I got an email from T, an old friend from Tulane, in which he told me of his own Indian sojourn as a doctor with a humanitarian mission. He wrote of riding the Manali-Leh highway, the highest motorable road in the world, and of other experiences traveling India's northwest that will elude me until we make it back here in the proper season for such altitudes. His closing thoughts included some sage advice, ready for Poor Richard's Almanack:"Never look down the hole of a north Indian shithouse...you'll never forget the dead dog on which you just dropped a watery load."
Whew, yeah. That's about right. Some days in India are very, very good. Some days are soupy shit on a dead dog, and no telling which one's you.
So T's words have been with me this week as we pack our things and depart this fine, strange country. As I write this, one day before our departure for places more Turkish, we have been in India for six months, two weeks, three days, and a 29th of February. We have logged at least a full fifty days in transit--probably even more, but I prefer not to think of them all at once. We have seen ruins thousands of years old and some dating from the last monsoon. There have been ups and downs and in-betweens too numerous to mention. And it's been a fucking blast.
But how does one sum up such an experience?
Our last morning in Arambol, D and I rose early for a final swim before the two overnights between us and Delhi. We strolled without speaking through the coconut grove separating Girkarwaddo from the beach, soaking in the salty air, heavy with three days of rain and clouds and a distinct feeling of finality. On the beach we walked south past the fishing boats to our favorite spot, where we saw from a distance a crowd gathered in the lapping surf. Thirty or forty people, Indians and gora, radiated around something lying on the sand. While we walked warily closer to the group, five men emerged from its center carrying the dripping greengrey body of an Indian boy maybe twenty years old, dressed for swimming in only his skivvies, lifeless as a sack of grain. They toted him out of the surf and laid him on the hard sand from the night's high tide, where a young traveler, his backpack still strapped on both shoulders, resumed performing CPR. Shocked, we stared at this scene as it played out over the following five minutes. Every couple series of compressions was followed by the men turning the boy on his side, a sickly white foam rolling out of his mouth, as the leader briskly rubbed his midsection to disgorge the fluid he had taken in. From our vantage point I could see two youths in their swimwear kneeling just behind the ring of people circling their friend, the knot of legs and bodies open on their side as if to let them watch. One rocked back and forth and craned his head to face the heavens, his mouth open in a wail that never found voice, before leaning over to punch divots in the hard sand with both fists. The other knelt stockstill, his face void of expression as he stared miles through the scene unfolding before him.
"Come on," I told D. "I don't need to watch some poor fuck die this morning." We walked on down the beach, turning our heads at intervals to check on the situation. While we swam at a short remove from the thinning scrum of people ten minutes or so later, the men again carried the boy, head lolling, fingers dragging in the sand, up the dune and into the coconut grove. This time they didn't stop for CPR. All urgency had evaporated from their movements and demeanors. I couldn't see the two other boys.
So we swam for a while longer as the beach returned to normal, the hawkers toting piles of vivid bedsheets on their heads, the Hello Coconut guy wheeling past on his bike, the couples ambling up from Mandrem for a bite on Glastonbury Street. As the unpromising clouds allowed fewer and fewer random shafts of light to hit the beach, we decided to call it quits, get cracking and packing, take care of a few last-minute details. My feet were in my sandals and I had already turned homeward when D asked, "Are those fins out there?" I spun back around and, sure enough, there were three dorsal fins breaking the water about 75 meters from shore: Dolphins porpoising north. I had heard this was the wrong season for dolphins, but they supposedly abound in the waters off north Goa. We looked at each other, each of us knowing we were going back in, and I kicked my shoes behind me and trotted off into the waves.
I swam out as fast as I could through the surf, bouncing above the swells to spot the fins and adjust my angle. One of them had trailed off southward, but the other two were still breaking the surface on a direct path perpendicular to my approach. Swimming further without seeing any sign of them, I was afraid I might have scared them off when one porpoised fifteen meters off my one o'clock, the other just after that, further off my eleven. They were close enough to watch their dark grey skin throw back the limited midmorning sunlight, dappling a brilliant silver and blue in concert with the glassy still water. I turned and D was smiling and pointing, nodding that Yes, she'd seen it, too. We treaded water for another ten minutes watching them recede, never getting any closer, until they were just shy of the headland at the north end of Arambol beach. Then we got out, dried off, scanned the water all the way back up the beach. Just in case.
So that's India. She'll throw you a dead guy and dolphins in the same morning, just to say Goodbye. Oh well. It's namaste, my dear, you intractable whore, you beautiful tease, adieu. We may meet again sometime. I'll be older, you'll stay the same age. Be well. Take care, and mind the children. Peace.
