Special Lassi

by Amrita Chatterjee

  One of these shacks had a big board propped up outside, advertising a healthy meal of WaiWai noodles and HIT beer. It reminded us of our student days, when after throwing up in the wee hours of the morning, we would cook ourselves a hearty meal of instant noodles and then throw up all over again. The interior was dark and dingy and the pungent smell of overcooked noodles was everywhere. A sweet little kitty was playing with a rat’s corpse in a corner and an underage girl was serving beer to everyone, nothing unusual. Here we ran into a group of Germans, who were heading to Pelling and they agreed to give us a lift. The chances of finding our way back to Yuksom from Pelling were slightly higher, so we went along.

  However, the moment we docked at Pelling, we got the ominous news that all the jeeps for Yuksom had already left. Again. This would have been upsetting if we hadn’t noticed the miraculous appearance of snow-clad mountains on the horizon. Gone were the omnipresent clouds and the sky had turned into the most intense shade of turquoise I’ve ever seen. In spite of the setting sun, for a second I was convinced that I could actually dive into it.

  Since nothing in Sikkim is ever too far away, we unearthed a decent dorm within ten minutes. River was so psyched at the sight of the mountains that he could hardly sit down in the room.

  “Did you see that? God, that was terrific! And to think that we weren’t even planning to come to Pelling. Ah! What a treat. I’ll go get us some alcohol and then we’ll go mountain gazing. Oh dammit, I wish we had some weed right now. This is the perfect place to get stoned. Do you reckon we could ask for some special lassi here?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so. You’ll only get it somewhere in the plains, Varanasi perhaps?”

  “Alright, that’s it. We are going straight to Varanasi from here!”

  “After we get our stuff back from Yuksom.”

  “For fuck’s sake! Yeah, but right after that we’re off.”

  “Sure, but we’ll need to get to Jorethang first.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Yup, no direct jeeps from Yuksom to anywhere outside Sikkim.”

  “Fine, fine, we’ll do that and then…”

  “And then we will have to go to Siliguri, the nearest city with a train station.”

  “Shit, we’ll have to do the whole tatkal thing right?”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “I need to get drunk immediately. I can’t deal with this sober.” With this, River rushed out of the hostel and I snuggled under the soft blanket to take a short nap. When I woke up, River was staring in glum silence at half a dozen bottles spread out on his bed. Rum, whiskey, vodka, gin, red wine, it was all there beside a huge pile of bananas.

  “What the…”

  “Don’t say a word. We’ll be leaving Sikkim soon, no more cheap alcohol, so I’m stocking up. Now tell me, what would you like to drink today?”

  Our mountain gazing eventually took place at a nearby rooftop restaurant, but there wasn’t much light. We had taken way too long to get drunk. Even the clouds had returned and the turquoise sky slowly turned into a marmalade orange before switching off for the night.

  “What do you want?” A chubby boy of about 12 slammed his notebook and pencil on our table. I realized that I had been holding onto the menu for ages without really looking at it. I thought he was offering me the notebook to write down my order, so I reached for it.

  “No, no, only me doing writing here. Tell what you want?” He cockily pulled out a chair and sat down next to us. I got a bit nervous and couldn’t decide what I wanted to eat. And to make matters worse, I was going to ask a child to get me more booze.

  “Can I get a double rum and coke?” The boy rolled his eyes and looked at River.

  “You? Don’t want food?”

  “Yes, I certainly do. I’ll have some chicken fried rice.”

  “No drink?”

  “Yes, can I have a pot of tea please?”

  “Ha.”

  The boy directed the ‘ha’ at me and left. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean. My outrage was somewhat mitigated by Mark Knopfler on the stereo. His voice was the last thing I was expecting to hear in Pelling. River, on the other hand, was beyond ecstatic to hear some music from his motherland.

  “This is so stereotypical – an Englishman enjoying his cup of tea, staring at the sky and listening to Dire Straits. But I’ve come to realize something on this trip; no matter how much I try to escape the cultural trappings of my country, I’ll never be able to get over the music. This whole Bollywood jingle jangle is a bit too much for me.”

  “I know, I know. I love English music the best,” one of the German ladies who had given us a lift came over to say hello. Her companions were missing, so she chose to join us for a drink. We talked about all the places we had been to so far on the trip, where we were planning to go next and the moment she heard Varanasi, her eyes lit up.

  “Varanasi is my favourite city in India! I remember when I came to this country for the first time almost ten years ago, I travelled alone to that terrifying place. Oh, it was such an experience. You know the ghats? The long lines of stone steps all along the Ganges leading right down to the water? It’s an unbelievable sight: so many people, all taking baths in the same water along with their cows and buffaloes, washing their clothes and cooking. Devotees doing puja, putting those lights into the water every evening, children begging everywhere. One time I was crossing the river and I saw a half-burnt corpse floating by in the water next to our boat. Coming from Europe, it was like waking up from a dream. I was not allowed to go inside those big temples because I’m not a Hindu, so I stood outside and listened to their songs and saw the lighting of the lamps. I had planned to go to Varanasi for just a few days, but I was so fascinated by everything there – the food, the saris, the gods – that I decided to stay on for three weeks. I lived in an ashram all by myself and walked around the whole city. I will never forget those times.”

  As she rambled on about Varanasi, I couldn’t decide whether I should be proud of the hazardous waste floating down the Ganges or get offended and point out her obvious fixation on poverty and filth. Varanasi may be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world, but the admiration comes to an abrupt halt when you see that the people too continue to live like they did in the tenth century BC.

  The German lady left our table sometime around nine, but we stayed on. There was no one else on the terrace besides us. Backpacking in the wrong season has its own perks and drawbacks. Everything is cheaper, but it can also get a bit drab and lonely at times. The cocky chubby boy who had taken our order was done with his day’s chores and he started hovering around us while pretending to stack the chairs on the tables. A bit later, even the cook and the cleaner abandoned their posts and came out on the terrace to stare at us. Things got uncomfortable very quickly, forcing us to leave. The night though, was far from over.

  Back in our dorm, we found an Argentinian backpacker, who burst out laughing the moment he saw us.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I saw all this alcohol and bananas on the bed and I thought to myself that maybe I will be spending the night with two big hairy Russian men!”

  “Did you? That’s the most flattering thing we’ve heard on this trip so far. Come have a drink with us.” I offered him a plastic cup right away.

  “Okay, but no vodka.”

  He poured himself some mountain rum and regaled us with stories from his long expedition across India. I was shocked when I heard that he had been on the road for a whole year and he still wasn’t done. Our journey seemed like a relaxing weekend compared to his. He had just entered Sikkim from Nepal and was planning to hit Assam after this.

  “But how did you get out of Nepal? Isn’t there a new rule which says that if you exit India on a tourist visa then you need to wait for two months before getting back in?” River inquired eagerly.

  “Yes, that’s right, so I spent two months in Kathmandu.”

  “Really? What did you do there for two months?”<
br />
  “I lived there. I really liked Kathmandu. It’s such a vibrant city.”

  “Even I wanted to go there, but I have a return flight to London next month, so I can’t just stay there for two months.”

  “That’s too bad. Nepal is a very nice country, you must go there someday.”

  “Yeah. Someday… when there are no countries, no borders, no religion and we all live as one.”

  “That day is not far.”

  “Amen to that,” River and I chimed in and unfolded our blankets for the night.

  After a long dreamless night’s sleep, we were served steaming pots of tea and aaloo paranthas right in front of the snow-capped Kanchenjunga, with the warm sunshine and placid sky framing the feathery peaks perfectly. Pelling is undoubtedly the best place in Sikkim for mountain gazing. If I had the time, I would’ve set up an easel right there on the hostel roof and sipped tea for the rest of the day.

  However, every time I look at a majestic mountain from a distance, I always wonder, why would anyone want to climb that? How does our dull, angular civilization compare to the view from down here? Not to mention all the hard work and life-threatening conditions you have to weather in order to get to the peak. I read somewhere that the son, daughter as well as the grandson of Tenzing Norgay have all scaled Mount Everest. It must be a nightmare to be born into that family. My parents only expected me not to flunk in school when I was 15, while I’m sure that Sherpa fathers expect their kids to jog all the way to Everest and back. Still, the Sherpas’ need to climb is understandable; it is, after all, their most lucrative source of livelihood. As for the others, well, who can reason with human desires? When the famous English mountaineer George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, he had said, “Because it’s there!”

  I complained to River about the stupidity of this argument, but he had a different opinion.

  “So what? As far as dying goes, Everest makes for a pretty good venue. A lot more people are killed every year by texting while driving. Now that’s what’s really stupid.”

  Man from the Kibbutz

  Our third attempt at getting back to Yuksom was not going very well. We had planned to check out early, but as always, at the last minute, River had this brilliant idea of leaving a little token of remembrance for the Argentinian backpacker. He took the biggest banana he could find and propped it upright in front of several pillows. Then he crumpled two pieces of paper, rolled them into balls and placed them under the banana. I have to say that the finished sculpture definitely resembled a big Russian man’s penis. It wasn’t as scary as we wanted it to be, but I hope that the Argentinian got to see it before the housekeeping did.

  Since Pelling’s jeep stand is pretty much an imaginary spot on the road, we had to set up camp at a small coffee shop on the other side and wait for our potential jeep to roll by. We had been there for merely five minutes when we saw the same Israeli family from Sonam’s Homestay walking up to us.

  “Well, aha shalom! You are staying here now?” the man greeted us in his hoarse, fractured voice.

  “Yeah, we did last night. Now we are waiting for a jeep to Yuksom.”

  “Yuksom? Oh, no, no, no! We have also been here for the past two hours, but no luck.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “What else? Keep waiting, we have to go to Yuksom today!”

  Once the family had stacked their backpacks alongside ours, River and I happily left the business of getting us a jeep to the Israeli man. He was a machine; he stopped every single vehicle on the road to ask if it was headed for Yuksom. When the drivers said no, this man screamed back at them, “why not? Yuksom is a beautiful place.” At one point, he started yelling at these two local girls who were standing under a tree, “hey, are you going to Yuksom? No? Why not? Yuksom is a beautiful place!”

  The girls gave him a nasty side-eye and quickly walked away.

  After three hours of giggling softly while watching him heckle everyone, we finally found someone willing to reunite us with our precious crap. Relieved, we piled into the backseat and bid farewell to Kanchenjunga. I know I’ve blathered on enough about jeep rides, but this one was truly a cut above the rest because of the Israeli family and this Anglophile sitting next to the driver. I don’t remember how the topic of music came about, but I clearly recall him announcing loudly, “today’s music? Garbage! Nothing but garbage. There are no great singers anymore. Who is our answer to Frank Sinatra or Engelbert Humperdinck? Ah! What a voice! Have you heard his songs?”

  It seemed as though he was addressing everyone, but actually he was speaking only to River. I should mention here that at the time I had no idea about who or what Engelbert Humperdinck was. I had to come home and Google a few variations like Hump-me- Dingle-dick, Double-dunk-my-hyper-dick, Elderberry-Hamper- drink before the internet could guess what I was trying to get at.

  I wanted to tell him, “yes, yes, we’re impressed that you wank off to Sinatra. Now calm the fuck down" But the Israeli man beat me to it by claiming that he would prefer Pandit Ravi Shankar’s sitar over Mr. Humperdinck’s crooning any day.

  “I just love Indian music! It is so sweet to the ear, so full of melody. We all know one Hindi song; should we sing it for you?”

  “Of course, please do,” River and I encouraged them to go on.

  “Okay, one… two… three…” and they all, including their little boy who could hardly form coherent words in Hebrew, started singing, “tujhe dekha to yeh jaana sanam… pyaar hota hai deewana sanam…”

  It was unbelievable. I had to interrupt them to ask how they knew this song.

  “He came to India for the first time in 1995. At that time, the movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge was very popular and he watched it many times. When he came back to our kibbutz, we got married, had children then he taught this song to all of us,” the wife narrated the whole story and then looked at her man with immense pride and love. This was definitely an odd yet endearing family. However, the Humperdinck fan had to butt in and ruin the charming moment.

  “Yes, yes, it’s quite nice, but River, have you heard the song I beg your pardon, I never promised, you a rose garden? Now that’s a song, my all-time favourite.”

  River rolled his eyes and we silently agreed to refer to this pompous arse from then on as Mr Hump-me-Tickle-my-dick.

  Our jeep driver was a nice family man, so obviously he had to stop on the way to buy his weekly groceries. Meanwhile, we all loitered around the makeshift market, wondering to ourselves, only in India, only in India. But then he gladly acquiesced when we wanted to make a quick stop at a waterfall, so I guess the system works both ways. This time I went all the way up to the top and even waded in the cold water for a short while. There was a man up there whose job was solely to hold people’s hands while they stepped into the water. At first I thought it silly and unnecessary. The water was barely up to my knees; what could possibly go wrong? But as always, I learned my lesson the hard way. The rocks beneath the water were the real problem. They were jagged and slippery and I managed to cut my feet within two seconds of stepping in. The man quickly came to my rescue, grabbed my hand and looked at me reproachfully, “if you die here madam, I won’t get paid!”

  Here too, River had to tolerate Mr Hump-me-Tikle-my-dick as he recalled the good old days when he used to visit this exact spot with his wife.

  “Why don’t you do it anymore?” River asked him innocently and the man replied with an unnecessary touch of melodrama, “because she’s expired now.”

  “Expired? Like medicine?” River turned to me, perplexed.

  “He means to say that she has passed away, as in… she’s dead.”

  “Right, I see.”

  * * *

  This evening in Yuksom, we tried the traditional Sikkimese alcoholic drink called Thongba. I don’t know if it’s any different from the Tibetan Chhaang and neither do I wish to find out. This was my first and last experiment with any local Himalayan concoction. The guy servi
ng us almost laughed in our faces when we told him that we wanted to try it. Then he brought out two mini wooden barrels filled with millet grains and topped it up with warm water. A lot of people describe this drink with adjectives such as ‘delicious’ and ‘wonderful’; to me, it tasted like vomit, that too, like someone else’s vomit. I prefer my alcohol cold and dry, not warm and milky. But it did get us hammered thoroughly, so it wasn’t a complete waste of money. Unfortunately, post the drink, we had to endure the whining of an annoying lady from Durham, who had just arrived. When she was done complaining about the state of her toilet, she started on the food, then on the people, then the jeep service.

  “Is there anything to do in this bloody village?” she demanded gruffly.

  “Uh… hiking?” River made his first suggestion.

  “Done enough of that. What else?”

  “You could visit the monastery?”

  “Oh god, not another one of those. Next.”

  “Try the birds then,” I joked.

  “Ahan! That sounds like fun. And where will I find them?”

  “Well…” In the fucking sky, you crazy woman!

  The following day, we had to leave at the crack of dawn, but remembered at the last moment that we hadn’t paid for the room. River went downstairs to look for the bellboy, who we always saw lolling around the reception with the radio blaring at full volume. River came back a few minutes later with a strange look in his eyes.

  “I couldn’t find him, but the radio is still on and you know what’s playing?”

  “What?”

  “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave! I think the bellboy is trying to send us a message.”

  “What rubbish! I’ll find him.”

  I went downstairs again and the entire hallway was deserted. A small yellow bulb was coughing into the darkness every few seconds. Hotel California continued to play on the portable stereo and the boy was nowhere to be seen. I even yelled a few times, but no one responded. What a perfectly creepy way to start the day. We had two options: we could simply vamoose or we could leave the money somewhere in the hope that the bellboy finds it. I considered the first option for a long minute, but then it occurred to me that opportunity knocks on your door, whereas karma beats it down till it has extracted its pound of flesh. And the last thing a backpacker in India needs is bad karma on top of all the shit that can go wrong anyway. Ultimately, we hid the money under the desk with a little note and were on our way out of Sikkim.