Wanderlust

Preamble:

This is a pensive, languid mood rambling travelogue-styled romance story of a backpacking young man and older woman pair. The settings and spirit of the time, mostly factual, are of the late 1990s, just before the turn of the millennium.

The story is written in ornate literary language, with lite herbal infusions of music, literature, art, philosophy, psychology and physics.

The sex action is rendered lite. If this style of calibrated narrative is not your thing, if you much prefer wailing and flailing robust action by sex triathletes, skip along.

***

Chapter 1: Assignment

Chapter 2: Calcutta

Chapter 3: Hotel Maria

Chapter 4: Revelry

Chapter 5: Calcuttans

Chapter 6: Cosmos

Chapter 7: Reverie

Chapter 8: Mother

Chapter 9: Goodbye

Chapter 10: Bodhi

Chapter 11: Alexandria

Epilogue

***

Chapter 1

Assignment

"I'm in a bit of a pickle."

"What is it?"

"I'm due to leave in three days on a backpacker travel writing commission. You know I operate freelance."

"I remember now. You enthusing over it last time we spoke. And the money is good."

"Liz my photographer is ill. Can you come with me?"

"It's been years since I retired from pro photography."

"A good eye for photography is a poet's soul with a camera. You can never lose that."

"We leave Tuesday?"

"9 pm"

Sharp and sure. Characteristic of Alexandria, or Alex for short. My former Master of Fine Arts adjunct professor in uni who is influential in shaping my career in the creative realm. Before entering academia, she was a professional photographer.

My uni has a post-graduation continuing mentorship programme where a graduate is paired with an assigned teaching staff as a mentor for two years. A free-and-easy arrangement. The mentor-mentee relationship is left to the participants to forge. Although our two years have passed, we have continued our engagement as it seems so natural to do so. But, I still look up to her as my Professor.

The journey of a thousand miles begins just like that. A nonchalant shrugged OK. Economical on words, extravagant on spirit.

***

Chapter 2

Calcutta

There is a handful of places in my life that don't seem to change. Calcutta is one. It is the constant I come back to, against which I measure the changes in my life, the changes in the place I come from. While the only constant in where I come from is change, in Calcutta I can trust the buildings and people to be still there on my next visit.

My third visit. The things I journaled on my first trip still hold. Dum Dum airport is in the same state. Dusky atmosphere in the customs hall. Same under-the-breath solicitation for baksheesh. It is like coming back to a beginning. The start of my first real journey.

When I last left Calcutta three years ago, a journey terminated by a mysterious virus that took a month at home to dislodge, I said never again.

Now, Alex and I are riding the ravaged roads in a battered Ambassador cab. A frozen speedometer. A door secured with wire. A stale marigold garland swinging from the rearview mirror. Faded pictures of Shiva and Ganesh on the dashboard. I feel I am returning to an unfinished story. The squat, chubby Ambassador is a survivor, still roadworthy after twenty or more years of use, kept in shape with improvisatory repairs. I have missed its bouncy and spacious ride. The dimly-lit hovels lining the road from Dum Dum. Parched brown fields. Omnipresent mounds of refuse picked at by crows and mangy dogs. Stagnant drains and pools of malarial waters. Loitering cows and overburdened buffalo carts. The familiar grimy tenement blocks. Garish Bollywood billboards. Snarling traffic.

***

"You look pensive. Processing memories from your last time here?"

"You've to stop reading my mind. Yes."

"Who was your photographer then?"

"Marisol"

"Do I know her?"

"No"

"Another one of your sweet young things?"

"Actually, she was your age."

"Was?"

"She died three months ago while on assignment in Colombia covering the FARC revolutionaries. Tragic accident."

"Oh! May she rest in peace."

"I doubt it. If she goes about death the way she lived life, there's no rest."

"You must tell me about Marisol."

"I will. Later."

A gentle smile plays around the corners of her mouth that says she knows. Though I don't know knows what.

***

Marisol. Short form of María de la Soledad. Literally "Mary of the solitude". A title given to the Virgin Mary.

And yet, coincidentally, Marisol sounds like "mar y sol", Spanish for "sea and sun".

That duality. That was Marisol.

***

Alex, first time in India, whips out her Nikon. She is shooting away, out of the car window, in confused rapt fascination. I wonder what stream of consciousness is coursing through her mind.

She needs some away time from her husband. I get a sense that their relationship is strained. Though I don't know anything for sure. These things, they are complicated. This trip is so perfect for her.

***

The driver blasts his way through a crowded street. Takes a corner with reckless abandon. Cleaves through dhotis and saris, trotting rickshaws and overladen carts pulled by abused bullocks, or by an equally scrawny human team.

As only happens in India, or rather in Calcutta, the driver gets out at a traffic light, opens the hood and feeds the thirsty engine with water. At another set of lights, he starts a chat with a neighbouring taxi driver, gets out and walks over to his compatriot for a more engaged banter.

Finally, his taxi, which has outperformed all first-world Mercedes-Benzes in usefulness and lifespan, grinds to a halt.

***

The lonely planet of the backpacker. Asia. Bangkok has its Khao San Road. Kathmandu, Thamel. Ho Chi Minh, Phạm Ngũ Lão Street. Hanoi's Old Quarter. Singapore, Bencoolen Street. Penang, Chulia Street. Hong Kong, Nathan Road. Bali, Kuta.

These backpacker enclaves, scattered like raw unpolished gems across Asia, are more than mere destinations. They are sanctuaries for the weary traveler, crucibles of culture and camaraderie. Every alley and avenue offers a new adventure, a new story to be told. Here, under the watchful gaze of ancient deities and buzzing neon glow, the spirit of exploration is alive, vibrant and eternal.

Consider Khao San Road in the throbbing heart of Bangkok. It pulses with a rhythm all its own. Neon lights flicker like fireflies in the humid night air, casting a surreal glow over the throngs of travelers. The aroma of pad thai and mango sticky rice wafts through the air, mingling with the scent of incense and the salty tang of sweat. Here, the night is alive with possibility, a cacophony of music and laughter echoing through the narrow alleys. Every bar and hostel, every streetside stall, tells a tale of serendipitous encounters and ephemeral connections.

And then, in the backstreets of Hanoi's Old Quarter, the narrow lanes are a symphony of sound and colour. Motorbikes weave through the maze-like streets, their horns creating a discordant yet harmonious soundtrack. Street vendors call out their wares. The sizzle of bánh mì and the rich aroma of pho tantalising the senses. Under the soft glow of lanterns, travelers share stories over bia hơi, the laughter and camaraderie weaving a tapestry of shared human experience.

Romantic charm, even if dank and musty in parts.

***

To write a backpacker travelogue, I have to live it. I am back on Sudder Street.

It is the end of a winter day. The twilight gives the street a peaceful aura. For a moment I have the illusion I have come home.

A sense of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. What if I live the same life over and over again, every victory, every loss, every happy, every sad moment? What will I make of my life then? Will I rejoice or despair at the prospect?

The street vendors are still there, their devotee backpackers ranged round for chow mein and chai. At street corners, in the lanes off Sudder Street, small groups of Bengalis and backpackers trying to go native, negotiating the hash or sharing remedies for illnesses private and universal.

Beside us, a hand-bell clangs and a rickshaw wallah asks a hopeful "Rickshaw?" as if he has waited faithfully for my return.

After shrugging off the cab driver's obligatory demand for more money, we make for the landmark red front of the Salvation Army hostel.

The moustachioed warden in a grey safari suit assigns us two upper beds close to each other, in a dank room with a few straggling straws of light.

I clamber on board, as does Alex. The structure trembles, its groans rousing the slumbering figure on the lower bed. Bodies persecuted by all classes of illness have slept on these beds. The holey bedsheet is testimony again to the Indian ingenuity in making things serve beyond their natural lifespan. I shift to find the best position.

An invigorating smell seeks my senses. An unmistakably Calcuttan odour brew that I find especially strong in the Red Shield hostel. A mustiness laced with strong disinfectant, dim mildewed rooms and damp mattresses. The odour of a place that has been inhabited continuously by shoestring travellers.

In a yet earlier trip, I bunked here with a Japanese volunteer at Mother Teresa's, a Japanese-American artist on a three-year trip around the world, and a Korean who with his mountain bike was attempting to travel overland from India to China via Nepal. In those days, the blackouts were more frequent. We would sit around the candles and share our life stories.

I wonder where they are now. How easy the friendships of the road are. Especially in India. It has a way of connecting people that no other country can.

Perhaps that is why I have come back, not just for the writing assignment, but to connect or reconnect, to find a permanent solution to the restlessness in me.

***

Calcutta is falling apart. Or rather hanging together at the seams. But it looks as if it is going to survive for a few centuries yet, and will probably be standing when the First World metropolises have accelerated to common doom.

The same claptrap buses ply the routes. Buses used elsewhere in the 1960s and early 70s. Two conductors leaning out from the doorless front and back exits, shouting out the destinations of their route, banging the bus to slow down for passengers getting off or on.

The sidewalk on Nehru Road is again unearthed. Men clothed in lungis and dust go at it with shovels and picks. You don't see jackhammers and bulldozers. What you see is sheer human capital strength, the endurance, the ability to take all the blows that life deals you and remain standing.

Beside the Indian Museum, the hillock of refuse that I saw on my first trip is there still, with bird and human scavengers sifting it. Along the pavement the homeless have pitched their lean-tos out of cardboard, straw matting, odd bricks, plastic sheets, broken timber. Anything they can lay their hands on. In the evenings, you can see their meagre cooking fires, parents, grandparents and children huddled around the warmth.

On Sundays, a Hindu charity sets up a makeshift kitchen. Flocks of children queue to get their ration of dhal and rice. The same charity also holds pavement classes. The few children sit around a volunteer with a pencil and exercise book, a reprieve from begging, or scavenging, or slaving away in the shops or restaurants.

Off Sudder Street is a Punjabi restaurant called Khalsa. It is my fave eating place. Low ceilinged. Kitchen dim as a cave. The staff are boys in well used singlets and shorts working at the fires, rolling out the chapattis and executing the orders. I recognise a few faces. They have grown a few inches. In India, you cling on to your job for dear life and do not complain about working the whole day, seven days a week. At the counter an impressively turbaned Sikh presides, bellows orders without any show of exertion, adding up the bill on a board with white chalk, so customers leave impressed by Sikh honesty.

The German who was on my air flight earlier is there. Grimace still on his face, poking at the food exploratorily, searching for that something that he doesn't wish to find.

So is Etienne, our roommate, a freelance photographer. Calcutta is fertile ground for the camera's eye, every moment a photographable instant.

"How's it going?"

"Good. Shot a lot of street scenes. I found a street where I sat the whole day and caught all the moods and characters. I come back every year for this, and the hash, of course."

"What do you do with the pics?"

"Some I send for competitions. Some to magazines. Some I keep."

Although Etienne and Alex are in the same craft of photography, Alex doesn't appear very interested in engaging him. Maybe she is tired from the warp of jet lag. Maybe there is way too much of India to parse on her first evening. Maybe she prefers to let her camera do the philosophising.

Earlier, I saw Etienne approaching the makeshift cardboard homes, getting close-ups of the destitute families eating their only meal of the day. I don't know about Alex, but I am trying not to start a debate about the ethics of it all. But Etienne pre-empts me and starts to absolve himself and members of his profession.

"I know it is mercenary. But it is also an art that bears witness. It is important the rest of the world know what is happening. We are like messengers, you know, delivering their cry for help."

"I'm not too sure. I think photography turns suffering into something aesthetic. It's dangerous to turn pain into art, something we enjoy looking at and want to possess because it makes us feel good, feel that we are capable of feeling."

No sooner is my indictment out than I wish I could have my dhal and chapatti in peace. I am also feeling guilt. From my last trip, I produced some well-received poems about Calcuttan suffering.

"But without the pics, everybody would be in the dark about the suffering," Etienne counters, producing a tobacco pouch and rolling a cigarette.

"I think we've had enough of these pictures. Mother Teresa and the City of Light. It doesn't strike a moral chord anymore."

"You are speaking for yourself. There are many who need to be informed."

The antagonistic look in Etienne's pale green eyes softens as he exhales. Alex shifts to avoid the smoke.

"For me, it's just another form of capitalist exploitation. Something you can't separate from tourism. It's an act of intrusion, a violation of privacy, and the right to suffer without being captured on film," I say, looking a bit annoyed at being drawn into this futile debate.

"If you prefer to argue that way, then you and I and all tourists or travellers, as some of us call ourselves, are guilty of exploitation."

"Yes. Not that the poor are putting up a strong resistance. Quite the opposite. They like to play the game. It's your dollars they are after. They don't give up. This morning I had a bunch of kids clinging on for half a kilometre. No father, no mother, baby hungry. Same story."

I hate my own cynicism. How different I was on the first trip. Coming from an affluent society, the poverty had shocked me. I could not turn down each plea for help without stabs of guilt, sometimes retracing my steps to find the persistent and annoying beggar. The Indian poems came months later, after the trip, when I began sifting through my experiences. I felt guilty writing them but they answered a need to make sense of it all. Was I any less culpable, using words instead of the camera?

Maybe I'm overthinking things as usual. Projecting my middle class values on the destitute. They would have a hearty chortle if they knew what I'm agonising over. Isn't this rich?

***

That night, Etienne and his fellow Frenchmen are sharing a joint. Alex and I lie in our respective upper bunk beds wrestling with the bedbugs. Like some smooth, sightless creatures born in darkness, they wander over my body. Probably Alex's too.

My first stay was wonderful. There were good companions and the thrill of being in Calcutta for the first time. The Red Shield was a happy place then. Now, it seems dank and less hospitable. One should never try to recapture lost paradises. That is a recurring lesson as one gets older.

I feel bad having put Alex to this. I climb up to her bunk. There is something on her mind besides the strand of hair on her forehead. I nudge her.

"Alex, bring your sleeping bag and come with me. I know a spot on the rooftop where we can sleep, away from the bedbugs."

***

There is a sheltered spot on the open rooftop. For a winter night, it is not particularly chilly.

We lay our sleeping bags side by side. So close, we can roll over into each other's dreams. We snuggle into them. We are, kind of, camping.

We have trouble falling asleep even though we are dead tired.

The stars. They are way too clear and bright for a grim city. I guess the darkness of night is liberating. Invisibility, a form of freedom. We forget inconvenient reality for awhile until a new dawn resets reality to a new same.

Alex turns to face me. She sees that I am awake, restless, my eyes tracking the stars. She shifts a little. Puts her head on my shoulder. Just like the song. What are the lyrics again?

Put your head on my shoulder

Whisper in my ear, baby

Words I want to hear, tell me

Tell me that you love me too...

Sweet syrupy drip. But nice.

***

"I'm sorry for dragging you into this snakepit."

"Don't be. I'm having a good time. Been awhile since my senses have been filled like this. I haven't felt like this since I can't remember when."

We had a professor-student relationship before. We were defined by a purpose that fed into itself. Now, we are just ourselves. I suddenly feel free. A smooth flow of energy, rather than a chain of discrete events. There is a great simplification. Though I don't really know of what precisely.

I move aside the strand of hair on her forehead and kiss her. That lit her up. Happy songlines on her face.

"Tell me about Marisol. I'm piqued."

"She was in her forties. Your age to be precise. Looked exactly her age to the day."

"She was heartbreakingly beautiful. She had massive sexual capital to deploy. But I never saw her do. Well, it wasn't like she had to do anything. It was all just there. The stuff of fairytales and dreams. A sort of magical realism."

"Do you've a photo of her?"

I fumble for my cellphone. I launch the photo album. An image of Marisol brandishing her camera.

"Here"

"Is this a joke? Did you photoedit me over her?"

"She is what she is."

Alex gives her head a quiet shake as if to reset reality. Tilts her head slightly as if to view things from a new angle. She is about to say something, then, bites her lip. A gentle smile plays around the corners of her mouth, as if something wonderful is about to occur. Her gold earrings glint in the moonlight.

Continuing, "She lived big. You could see it in her eyes. You just could kind of picture, when she sprang out of bed each morning, she would tell herself to live. Live! Live! Live! She pushed each day to the max because tomorrow might not get scheduled. And that took courage. She was the kind of woman who people stopped what they were doing to listen to."

"My soul was like a quivering violin string. She wore a simple Christian crucifix necklace. Was she religious? I never did find out. The Jesus figure nestled deep into her cleavage, the slightly twisted chain pressing Him against her left breast in a sort of figurative suffocation."

"Marisol drew her artistic inspiration from literature. She loved to read poems in her idle time."

"The usual suspects were huddled in the Blue Sky Café. A happy haze in the air. Marisol did a reading of Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. Then, she read a poem on figs, also by DHL, as a kind of complementary closing. DHL was transporting. Everyone was moved."