Henna for the Broken Hearted

by Sharell Cook

  The lack of infrastructure was apparent back at the guesthouse too. There was no municipal water supply. Instead, water had to be pumped from a well. There was no hot-water heater, so we had to bathe under cold water. The electricity supply, while inadequate, was at least predictable. It would go off daily at around 9 a.m. and return at around 5 p.m. The term given to this government-imposed power cut, as a means of dealing with the shortage of electricity, was ‘load-shedding’. Since the tourist season was yet to start, load-shedding was at its peak.

  As was to be expected, washing machine facilities were non-existent. The local dhobi-wala (laundryman) came to everyone's homes on his bicycle to collect dirty laundry. A couple of days later he would return it washed, ironed and folded. I couldn't justify paying him to do all our washing, so I decided I'd wash our clothes by hand myself and only give him the bed linen. Without a laundry sink, it was time for me to get intimately acquainted with the many uses of the Indian bucket.

  In Varkala Town, I bought my own bucket collection. Five large buckets. Besides soaking clothes in buckets, I'd need a few for washing dishes.

  From Aryan, I learned the special way of washing clothes in India. Laundry detergent comes in the form of a soap bar. It's smeared onto the clothes, and rubbed in with a brush. The clothes are then picked up and repetitively bashed on the floor or any other hard surface, sometimes rocks, to dislodge the dirt. It was a tiring process that I undertook in our wet bathroom.

  Two workers came to cut the grass around the bungalows and the kitchen. By hand, I might add. The kitchen was similar in structure to the shacks along the Cliff. Made mainly out of bamboo, it had a tin roof, painted concrete floor and no water supply. Inside was a fridge, TV, stove and bench. The stove, a portable silver cooktop with two burners fired by gas from a cylinder, and standard in most Indian kitchens, reminded me of a piece of camping equipment. I was to discover that it was necessary to learn how to predict when the gas would run out, or end up with a half-cooked meal.

  On another trip to town, Aryan and I stocked the kitchen with utensils. Armed, I decided to celebrate by making us a fish curry for dinner. Living by the ocean meant that fish was plentiful. The daily catch was sold fresh at the local fish market every morning.

  Aryan and I returned with three whole fish, complete with heads, tails and fins attached. Having only ever cooked scaled and filleted fish, I was at a loss at how to prepare it. I randomly chopped off body parts and attempted to extract organs. It was gory and disgusting; more of the fish ended up in the scrap pile than could be cooked. After watching me massacre the first fish, Aryan took over.

  ‘Here, do it like this.’ He started cutting the fish into pieces crosswise, the way he'd learned to do it from his mother.

  The curry ended up tasting surprisingly good.

  As well as feeling a little at sea domestically, I was also experiencing some difficulty dealing with the guesthouse owner. She, and a male relative who'd been deployed to take care of the day-to-day running of the property, seemed intent on extracting as much money from us as possible. Not only did they demand that we pay a premium for rethatching the bungalow roofs, they expected us to pay the property tax.

  ‘Legally, it's not our responsibility,’ I told the landlady.

  ‘But Emily paid it in previous years,’ she insisted.

  ‘It doesn't matter. Emily was mistaken. It's your responsibility as the property owner.’

  I refused to budge.

  Then the water pump seized up.

  The relative, who we called ‘Uncle’, as per Indian custom, was supposed to pump the water for us every day. When he was unable to come, we had to do it ourselves. Inevitably, we forgot to turn off the pump and the motor seized up.

  ‘You have to pay for it to be repaired. You've maliciously damaged the pump and it's intolerable,’ the landlady ranted at me down the phone.

  I was offended.

  ‘It's not fair to blame me for this. The pumphouse isn't on the lease and it's not our responsibility. If Uncle had come to pump the water like he was supposed to, it wouldn't have happened. I'm not paying you anything. Emily has already invested so much money in developing this property. Come and discuss it with me when we finalise the lease,’ I argued.

  Later, as Aryan and I lay in the hammock between the coconut trees at the guesthouse, I asked him what he thought my best and worst characteristics were. He contemplated a while.

  ‘You believe in your views and think about the big picture. But you lack commonsense.’

  The commonsense that Aryan referred to was Indian commonsense. He often found my inability to think in an ‘Indian manner’ exasperating. Only recently, I'd become upset over an announcement for a special Saraswati puja (prayer) at one of the beach shacks. I rushed there with high hopes, only to find nothing happening.

  ‘You should have known it was just an advertising strategy,’ Aryan chided me when I objected.

  Used to western standards of conduct, I readily believed what people told me. I was always punctual and expected that others would be too, unfamiliar with the concept called India time. Five minutes often meant thirty. Ten minutes meant an hour. And an hour commonly had no fixed duration.

  ‘I'll come at 9.30 a.m. to sign the rental agreement and discuss the money,’ the landlady informed me. The appointed day and time passed. She didn't turn up or tell me that she wasn't coming. Aryan, on the other hand, was relaxed about such things. Nor was he surprised at all. It was clear that I had a lot to learn.

  Aryan had had no problem getting work at the shacks on the Cliff. Two beach shacks, the Groovy Beach Café and Dolphin Bay, dominated the party scene.

  ‘Make friendship in the night, like sea waves at Groovy. Get yourself free and enjoy yourself with your unknown humans’, a party flyer from the Groovy Beach Café invited everyone.

  I loved dancing under the stars until the early hours, with the surf only metres away at the bottom of the Cliff. It was such a world away from the craziness of Kolkata, and even Melbourne. Neither alcohol nor late-night parties were permitted on the Cliff, but the police were appropriately persuaded, usually with money and boxes of beer, by the shack owners. The shack owners seemed charming but were divisive under the surface. It soon became apparent there was a lot of competition for business and foreign women on the Cliff.

  The afro-ed Kama, owner of the Groovy Beach Café, was the smoothest talker I'd ever come across. From humble beginnings as an auto-rickshaw driver, he'd built a small empire. Besides the Groovy Beach Café, he also provided travel services and lodging. He was friendly, exceedingly helpful and knew how to please customers as well as women. Most of the tourists who visited his beach shack left with the impression that he was a delightful, genuine guy. What he really excelled at, however, was bedding the foreign women who visited his shack. It didn't matter that he had a wife and two children secreted away somewhere, he could frequently be seen leading a gullible woman by the hand up to the second floor of his shack.

  ‘I am the master of sex. I love wild animal sex,’ he boasted to us one night. The thought of it left me reeling.

  The local men wasted no time in getting acquainted with Daisy. Kama lured her in by giving her an opal ring, then pretended to be extremely hurt when she rebuffed him in favour of a waiter named Vincent from Dolphin Bay. Vincent, a tall and brawny Malayalee man, was one of the best-looking guys on the Cliff. It wasn't long before he was practically living with Daisy in her bungalow. It was a more appealing alternative than the benches that the staff used for beds at the back of the beach shacks.

  Most of the guys who worked in the shacks quickly found out that I was with Aryan and kept a respectful deference. It didn't stop them from following in Kama's footsteps and doing their best to snare as many other western women as possible. I soon came to realise that they didn't have to try very hard. There were many single white females looking for a good time on Varkala Cliff.

  ‘Have you heard about Kama and his beach weddings?�
� Vincent asked us one night.

  We hadn't.

  ‘Last year, he held four of them with different girls who he'd met.’

  ‘What, real weddings?’

  ‘No, mock ones but with a proper ceremony on the beach.’ Maybe the wild animal sex was better than it sounded.

  To make it easier to get around, Aryan and I purchased a second-hand moped. Riding home on the back of it, with the wind whipping my hair, I felt so vibrant and content. We took a trip to nearby Kappil Beach, located a short distance north of Varkala Beach where the backwaters met the ocean amid swaying palm trees and a rocky shore. Kappil wasn't as developed as Varkala.

  After the break in the rain from the departing southwest monsoon, the northeast monsoon arrived with a vengeance, delivering unpredictable downpours. Unlike many regions of India, Kerala received two monsoons a year. The southwest monsoon travelled up the west coast of India from June until September. Then, the heavier northeast monsoon made its way down the east coast, covering Kerala from October to December.

  The monsoon rain made me melancholy. Mould grew everywhere in the humidity. Intermittent heavy downpours flooded the guesthouse grounds and caused shops to close. The neighbours' children came running over to our place holding plastic bags over their heads for protection, and with sticks to clear drains for the water to escape.

  Caught on the moped at another time during a downpour, Aryan and I were saturated in less than 30 seconds. The rain was so heavy I could open my mouth and drink the water. A local river burst its banks, and two of the streets near the Cliff turned into rivers, complete with fish. I got another dose of viral fever, the second in as many weeks. Again, I was bedridden for three days.

  To help myself recuperate, I went to see a Reiki master on the Cliff for a healing session. Reiki, the Japanese word for universal life energy, is an alternative therapy developed by a Japanese Buddhist named Mikao Usui. It involves the channelling of universal energy through the hands to the body's energy centres, known as chakras, to unblock and rebalance them. Each chakra vibrates at a different speed, and has a different function in a person's wellbeing. When we react to negative experiences by blocking out our feelings, it also blocks the energy flow to the chakras. I'd been interested in Reiki for quite a while and wanted to study it. I was still waiting for the right opportunity and teacher to come along.

  ‘The energy in your solar plexus chakra is very strong, indicating that you have great willpower,’ the Reiki master proclaimed after the session was complete. ‘However, the energy in your heart and root chakras is weak. This indicates that you don't feel connected with life and your environment, and haven't found what you want to do with yourself yet. You have the capacity to achieve whatever you want because of your willpower. But you need to learn how to control your emotions, so that you're less giving and won't be taken advantage of. Lastly, you need to focus your beliefs only in one religion. This will strengthen your aura. You should find a guru. One will appear when the time is right,’ he concluded.

  My religious beliefs had always been confused. Born to a Catholic father and Anglican mother, neither of whom much practised, I was left to make up my own mind about what I wanted to believe in. I grew up feeling that Christianity didn't really have all the answers.

  I was always attracted to New Age spirituality – palmistry, tarot, crystals. In my twenties, I dabbled in Buddhism and meditation. It greatly changed my outlook on life, but I was no closer to figuring out its meaning and forming concrete beliefs. In India, I'd begun exploring Hinduism.

  The Reiki master's assessment of my character was accurate. I readily went out of my way to please people, seeking approval and reassurance. A lot of the time, I felt like I didn't receive as much consideration as I gave. I also felt detached and disconnected from life. Despite the progress I'd made, I was still trying to accept how my life had turned out. And I had to find my way.

  It appeared I was no closer to uncovering the right path. Until I felt grounded, I'd likely struggle with my self-image and be unable to move on from the past. If my self-doubt turned my desire for Aryan into a need to control him, it also had the potential to affect our relationship. I needed to find my destiny, preferably soon.

  It wasn't easy to develop a sense of belonging on the Cliff. I met many travellers but struggled to relate to them.

  ‘What? You live here?’ they invariably expressed their shock. I had work responsibilities while they were simply out to have fun. I found their views about India, often discussed in a haze of hash, as a destitute but spiritual country limiting.

  ‘I'm having a “real India” experience in this market,’ an Israeli guy proudly informed me in Varkala Town.

  But what was the real India? To me, it was all real. Dual, but real. India was as rich as it was poor. Some people consumed a plethora of desirable brand names, while others struggled to consume one proper meal a day. A luxury hotel was just as much a part of the ‘real India’ as a vendor selling vegetables from his wooden cart. My time in Kolkata had proven that.

  The foreigners living long-term in Varkala were a motley bunch. Most infamous and intriguing was a middle-aged Englishman who was on the run with his wife and eight children. He believed he'd uncovered a secret government and religious conspiracy, and could usually be seen sitting in a beach shack warning some hapless traveller about it. He'd even documented his questionable evidence in a self-published book called Little Book, Big Secret.

  Aryan and I connected best with another young foreigner–Indian couple, Faye and her boyfriend, Michael. He was a talented chef from Darjeeling in north India. They ran a restaurant on the roof of their nearby home. It was there that I finally got to experience the pleasure of eating a variety of ghar ka khaana (home-cooked Indian food). On days that wine was available at the shop in Varkala Town, we lay on cushions under the stars, and drank and ate until we could barely move. Those moments of bliss were what we'd hoped living in Varkala would be.

  As more tourists trickled in for the season, however, a range of untoward incidents started taking place. It began with a power outage at the Groovy Beach Café while Aryan was at work one night, just as the party got under way and everyone was dancing.

  ‘Sulfi from Dolphin Bay has cut the power line,’ a murmur arose.

  Next, we heard a fight had broken out in Dolphin Bay. A foreigner had his passport and money stolen in the fracas.

  Just when it seemed like matters had settled down, the situation took a more sinister turn. Once, Aryan and I were woken by a phone call from Daisy at 3.30 in the morning.

  ‘There is a group of guys outside. They were at my window and have opened up one of the shutters,’ she whispered in alarm.

  We rushed out of our bungalow to see what was going on.

  ‘I think I saw them standing near the kitchen but they have disappeared now,’ Aryan said. The darkness made it impossible to distinguish anything from the shadows of the trees.

  When we returned to our bungalow, we discovered the guys hadn't gone far. My phone and handbag, which held my camera and purse, were missing. A wave of shock and dread hit me. I felt sick and dizzy. How could we have been so foolish?

  In the morning, the neighbours saw us sitting outside, looking distressed.

  ‘Check over the fence. A similar thing happened last year,’ they informed us after we told them what had taken place. Aryan scaled the high concrete fence that bordered the adjacent vacant land and looked over it. Much to my surprise, my bag and purse were there, minus the valuables.

  I hit a new low. Who could have done it? I didn't want to live among thieves.

  ‘How do you feel about being here?’ I asked Aryan uneasily. I was waiting for him to say that he wasn't happy so we could pack up and leave.

  ‘It's been great until now, and I still want to stay. I don't want to let this bother us.’

  Reassured by his attitude, I resolved to be strong and get over it.

  A trio of moustachioed policemen came to investi
gate the theft but did nothing of use. One of them made himself at home in the hammock. The other returned to the car. The remaining one snooped around. He checked out our moped and asked irrelevant questions.

  ‘So, what do you do back home? Do you work or study?’ he asked me.

  Then he proceeded to tell us off. ‘You shouldn't have left your bungalow in the middle of the night. You should have called us instead.’

  After learning of the policemen's movements for the rest of the night, however, I doubted that would have been useful either.

  ‘The police came to Dolphin Bay and collected a couple of boxes of beer to drink. They found one of the waiters drunk on the premises and also took him with them,’ Vincent told us. ‘I had to go to the police station this morning and pay a bribe to get him out.’

  Sulfi, the owner of Dolphin Bay, remained in trouble with the police. They sent him a court order that required him to go to jail for seven days for serving alcohol. It didn't matter that they'd taken two boxes of it for their own consumption. Sulfi's solution was to call a friend from Kochin, who was a Malayalee actor, to come and deal with the problem. In status-driven India, this friend had the power and the contacts to get things amicably resolved.

  After the strain of the robbery, I started noticing small positive changes in Aryan's behaviour. He was drinking less and helping me out more.

  On the other hand, Vincent was driving Daisy to distraction. A huge power struggle was going on between them. She packed his belongings for him to move out of the bungalow but he refused to go.

  ‘My last boyfriend did everything possible for me and treated me like a queen. Vincent is controlling and picks on everything, but then sulks if I hurt his feelings. Now, I've discovered that he's been in contact with an ex-girlfriend, and has made up all these lies. I don't know what to do with him!’

  As December progressed, and the northeast monsoon finally dispersed, the tourist season started to get busy. A friend of Aryan's visited us from Kolkata and the Italian couple moved into their bungalow. The German proprietor of the Skylark Art Garden organised a sunset parade, complete with elephant, along the Cliff to promote unity between businesses. She wrapped me in a red foil dress, painted my upper body and face in fluorescent colours, and plonked a huge hat adorned with doves on my head. I was a creature of her imagination.