by Vanessa Able
Satisfied that I’d follow his instructions, the motorcyclist puzzlingly turned his bike around and went back the way he had come. I pushed Abhilasha into first gear, gave her some gas and made our first move over Satan’s own pebbled path. Despite our near-crawling speed, rocks were still flying up at the engine and the undercarriage, and I winced with every little knock and bump. This could not be good for the tyres, the paintwork, the suspension, or the low-lying undercarriage.
Ek kilometre later, I wasn’t too surprised to find myself not staring out into the infinity of the Arabian Sea, but in fact looking at an impasse, as even the stony path had now disappeared and we had been ejected onto the edge of a field bordered by red sandy scrub. It was here I finally surrendered. I was lost beyond redemption. There was only one thing for it: I had to swallow my pride and start back up the road to retrace our steps.
As I winced over the rocks of death, cursing Delilah at every bump and bang, I felt the rose-tinted glasses through which I had been viewing rural India begin to steam up. I knew nothing other than the fact that we were somewhere on the 200 km stretch of land between Kolhapur and Goa. It wasn’t late yet, but the afternoon was certainly ripening in a way that told me I might not make it to my hammock before sunset.
I angrily renamed the SH115 the SH11T. And to top my SH11T pie with a turd cherry, events took a turn for the even more incredible when, just after I had made my way back over the road of doom, I ran into a roadblock manned by a group of children. A long piece of cane was laid across my path at about thigh height, balanced between two rickety wooden forks. Eight or so children milled about, presumably having just been released from school and embarking on an afternoon’s larks conning money out of lost people. In any other situation I might have found the wee tykes endearing and even amusing, but given the grimness of our current situation, it was all my inner Scrooge could do to press on the brakes and not shoot straight through their carefully crafted barrier.
I rolled down the window to a flock of confounded faces. I suppose that in turn, I was also the last person this little group of would-be taxmen was expecting to see that afternoon. So great was the shock at the sight of my face (I did have a quick look in the mirror to check it wasn’t covered in tiny pins) that for a second no one moved. Then one boy in shorts ran to a shack to call over a taller boy in trousers, who immediately pulled up the wooden bar by use of an impressively functional pulley system. I shot them a forgiving wink and hit the gas as they remained speechless in my dust.
About an hour back down the road, I saw a white jeep and a bunch of lads clad in jeans, T-shirts and Wayfarers who had stopped to have a cigarette. Finally, city folk. I couldn’t have felt more affiliation with this group of youths at that moment had they been my own brethren. I pulled up alongside, rolled down the window and took a deep breath.
‘Hello there. You don’t happen to know the way to Goa by any chance?’
I was met with seven blank stares suggesting the boys weren’t quite sharing my overwhelming sense of sibling fellowship.
‘Umm, Goa? Beach? Sea?’ (Hand movements) ‘Goa? Gooooooh-a?’
The light of comprehension burst behind the eyes of one of the lads. Goa! Of course. Yes, he knew, and he knew well. It wasn’t straightforward, but he slowly listed for me the succession of villages I’d need to pass through in order to get back out onto the NH17, the road headed south.
Gargoti, Uttur, Aza-somewhere… I wrote them all phonetically in my notebook, thanked the chap profusely and went on my way. List in hand, I was now sure to stop at every village to yell the names in front of me to random passers-by who then pointed me on to the next stop. I was sure this flimsy method was flawed at best, but I had no choice but to follow the paper trail from one village to the next. As it turned out, the village relay method proved remarkably reliable as well as instructive. I managed to glean several navigational pointers from the experience, including being able to decipher the hand gestures that relayed the necessity of taking a right or left turning in the near to mid-term future, as well as the requisite of asking for directions three times over at each step. Every now and then my chosen oracle either stank of booze or seemed so terror-stricken at the prospect of a me-driven Nano that his instructions were hard to divine. One guy who by the angle of his stance looked as though he’d had about five beers too many thought he’d actually have a go at getting in the car with me after I slowed down at a junction to ask him the way to Uttur. I locked the door in the nick of time and motioned to him in the politest possible way that I was not at this moment taking passengers.
It was after dark when we crossed the border into Goa. Uniformed police stood amid a flood of headlights and clouds of dust to stop every car on its way into the tiny state. When it was my turn, I rolled down the window to find a beaming policeman on the other side.
‘Nano!’ he exclaimed, twice.
He wasn’t to know that my mood had hit rock bottom, that I had been frustrated at the wheel for close to nine hours now and was in no mood for pleasantries.
‘Yes, indeed it’s a Nano, officer.’
The policeman sustained his smile, casting a curious eye over my lap to the junk on the passenger seat and the bags in the back.
‘Very good,’ he concluded. ‘Goa?’
‘Yes,’ I replied with faux solemnity, stifling the urge to ask him where the hell else I might be going, crossing the border into Goa at 7 pm.
He waved me on with official cheerfulness and Abhilasha and I finally crossed the threshold of our target state. It was another hour to Arambol, where the roads became thinner and the greenery noticeably lusher. We passed the odd church, some sweaty colonial houses and a couple of barefoot Israelis riding an Enfield at high speed and volume, before finally getting wedged into the tiny lanes of stalls selling tie-dyed fabrics, bongo drums and crystals that constitute Arambol’s hippie gateway.
I settled for the first hotel I found that appeared to have some adjacent parking space down a little side street: a gap the size of a garden path between two stationary Marutis. As I sized up the space against my mental image of Abhilasha’s actual width, a man knocked on my window and identified himself as the owner of one of the parked cars. He was confident, if not eager, to see me take the place next to him, and proceeded to direct me as I tried to squeeze Abhilasha into the munchkin-sized spot.
Within seconds, a small audience had gathered to monitor the manoeuvre from every angle and discuss my chances of completing the park successfully. I fancied someone might even be running a book. After several lurches backwards and forwards, I finished in triumph, sweating from the pressure of surveillance. However, with only about an inch between Abhilasha and the adjacent Marutis, the next challenge I faced was getting out of the car. The Maruti owner realized my predicament and beckoned me to back out again. With the engine off and the handbrake up, I watched from the sidelines as Abhilasha was gently nudged back into place under the combined effort of the bystanders until her bumper was just touching the wall behind her. Exhilarated by a job well done, the Maruti owner stepped forward and shook my hand, then informed me that I had to move from this spot by 8 am as Abhilasha was blocking the route of the daily garbage truck.
Rolling over in bed, I reached for my phone. It was 8:15 am.
‘Shit!’
I jumped up, pulled on yesterday’s discarded clothing from the floor and ran out of the door, expecting to find the Nano hanging from a tow-truck crane. But there she was, just as I had left her the night before. Only this time, one of the Marutis had been replaced by two rickshaws.
‘Nano girl!’ someone called. I turned around to see a group of four guys squatting and laughing from a doorstep behind me. I put on a weird simper to cover my true impression of ‘How the hell did you know this was my car?’ Feeling miserably like I was being laughed at, I nevertheless took advantage of the lads to enquire about the elusive garbage truck. My question was met with smiles.
‘No problem, no problem!’
‘But shouldn’t I move my car?’
There was a round of shakes of the head and waves of the hands and a general consensus that Abhilasha should stay put.
The oldest looking of the bunch, a guy in his late 30s wearing a white shirt with an animal leaping across the left breast stood up and motioned me over to the car. His tone was suddenly very businesslike.
‘Are you selling this car?’ he asked with a concerned frown. I noticed his friends had all risen too and were making their way towards us to listen in on the conversation. I was beginning to wish I had my own entourage for such moments: a gang of girls who would pop out of nowhere and gather around me in the style of a 1990s gangsta rap video, hanging off my shoulders and shooting vaguely irascible looks at whoever it was I was talking to.
‘Well, yes, eventually. But for now I’m driving it. Around India. For 10,000 kilometres.’ There was a round of sage nods from his boy-gang, but my interrogator was persistent.
‘When you are finished, will you come to Goa and sell it to me?’
Hang on, was he trying to cut a deal here? Seriously? He really wanted me to bring the car down to Goa after I had dragged it thousands of kilometres all the way around the country? What did he want it for, spare parts?
‘Will you still want it after 10,000 kilometres? What will you do with it?’ I asked suspiciously.
He brightened. ‘Of course. 10,000 kilometres is like a new car!’
I made a mental note to try to start reselling negotiations when the dial was at 9,900.
‘I have a Maruti Zen,’ the man continued. ‘But I would like to purchase this one-lakh car also.’ Now it was me nodding sagely, though in reality I was bewildered. Was this guy serious? I’d never been approached by anyone wanting to perform an automobile transaction as though he were selling me a postcard. With my spine still tingling from the previous day’s debacle in Maharashtra, I almost began to take his offer seriously. I could just sell the Nano now, cut my losses, take the cash and book a train back to Mumbai, still in one piece. This complete stranger was offering me a way out, an option not to spend the next dozen or so weeks embarrassing myself by bumbling cluelessly around the Indian countryside. Should I just take the money and run?
Swimming in options, I joined Abhilasha’s potential buyer and his boy-gang in turning to admire her radiant yellow sheen. I suddenly remembered the handbrake was still off and made for the passenger door to pull it up. Just as I was doing so, the man popped his head in next to me.
‘Madam, will you permit me a test drive?’
I straightened up. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Will you allow me to test drive this Nano?’
He might as well have asked if he could nip off with my liver for a few minutes. His request was so bold I was momentarily stunned; looking at his earnest features, I found myself flailing in a chasm of cultural relativism. I had been approached by a complete stranger who first wanted to buy my car, and now wanted to take it for a spin: was this a highly elaborate mugging or a friendly moment of village bonding? If I went with my instincts and refused him the car (and now I’d apparently agreed to sell Abhilasha to him, he considered himself as good as the owner), would I be committing an act of gross offence to a citizen of my host country? Was I about to break the last Indian taboo of not practising generosity with one’s car keys? I imagined a similar situation in London that would most likely end in police intervention and decided I wasn’t going to take a chance with my steed.
‘Um, no. Sorry, but no.’
He didn’t seem to take the rejection too much to heart. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card for an export company with large lettering in Courier.
‘This is my card. When you are ready to sell, you call me, okay?’
‘Right you are.’ I took the card and stashed it deep in my pocket next to Abhilasha’s keys. I crossed my fingers as I shook his hand, satisfied I’d made the right decision to hold on to the Nano. Trauma-yoked amnesia had kicked in and yesterday’s cock-up was already fast fading into a rosy pastoral narrative. The journey was young and the spectacular Maharashtran countryside had been but a warm-up, a rural test run to see what we were capable of as a team. From this point forward, we would be a terrifying pair, honed in navigation and linguistic skills, savvy to local customs, nifty with the gearstick, and most certainly not for sale.
5
ANARCHY ON THE NH7 – The Central Badlands
HAMPI to BANGALORE; KM 1,097–1,562
Just as my and Abhilasha’s union had been sealed, a new distraction appeared on the horizon in the form of an exasperatingly attractive French-American redhead, who went by the celestial name of Thor. Thor was a Doctor of Mathematics whom I’d met some months before at a wedding in France at the beginning of the terminal phase of my last relationship. The pull had been instant and painfully palpable, but the ill-timed explosion of what seemed like mutual interest was cut short by our circumstances and subsequently lost to me in the painful maelstrom of the lengthy break-up that followed.
Time passed and faintly instigated augury threw us together via social media, where our interests were reignited. In the weeks that followed, friendly messaging quickly turned into effusive e-flirting and it soon became apparent that Thor, who wrote programs for a living as a data scientist, also had an stake in India. While mine was more of the socioeconomic/motoring variety, his was purely spiritual: he’d been visiting the country annually for the last 17 years, going to an ashram in Chennai that advanced a form of Raja Yoga called Sahaj Marg and was the domicile of his guru, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari (‘But you can call him Chari,’ he wrote, to my relief). Quite coincidentally, it turned out that Thor was planning a trip over there fairly soon, so raising the possibility of us actually meeting up one day.
We skitted around the subject without either of us betraying too much enthusiasm for the plan, before I upgraded the situation to code red by dropping this devastating phrase into an email: ‘Why not come and travel with me for a while? Go on, it’ll be fun.’
I sent the message with some degree of misgiving. Although I was always quick to advise the heartbroken that resaddling on the dating horse was the best and most efficient way to get one over on post-break-up negativity, it also felt a bit too soon to be bringing another bloke into my life. To boot, inviting another human on board the good ship Abhilasha was the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing at that point, namely driving, blogging and generally concentrating on some self-restoration by way of navigating the Indian subcontinent. But I hadn’t the willpower to refrain; inappropriate, inconvenient, it was all far too enjoyable. So I counter-reasoned that our fling would be quick, fleeting and efficient in the single-minded goal of having a bit of no-strings-attached fun.
Thor’s reply was thankfully laced with equal compunction, and the sum of our two vacillations resulted in an agreeably rough-shod plan that had him coming to India at some point in the not too distant future: he’d travel out to meet me, we’d drive around together for a while and we’d ‘see what happens’, which I hoped was code for we’d go our separate ways. It was a high-stakes first date, and one that gave me significant wobbles in the light of the prospective future intimacy and all the complications that would naturally follow the simple act of getting my oats.
My nerves took a further blow a few days later when Thor suddenly upped the stakes in our dalliance by actually booking his tickets and setting a schedule: he was flying into Mumbai and then taking the train down to Bangalore, where we would meet in two days’ time.
Now that the potential encounter had morphed into a definite plan, I slipped into my familiar routine of rattling with the thrill of fantasy while cultivating the dread of impending reality. Doubt reared its grisly head and began to twist my thoughts into shapes of misgiving. I barely knew the guy. What if he was moody and difficult? What if he talked incessantly or never said a word? What if I realized we had absolutely nothing in common? With the realistic sce
narios duly processed, I began to ponder other, more outlandish possibilities: since we had next to no mutual friends, who, if it ever came down to it, could even vouch for him? He might be deranged, psychotic, a twisted marauder of women in cars, a cannibal hungering after the flesh of a Nano-packed female. I mean, why else would he be so keen on coming out to meet me, if not to cut me into small pieces and bury me in the far-flung scrub? He couldn’t possibly like me that much, not after a few brief conversations at a wedding and a series of, frankly, coquettish emails. There was still time, I thought, to tell him I had to bypass Bangalore, or I had far too much luggage and couldn’t take on any passengers. Or that Abhilasha was allergic to men.
These anxieties began to take hold to the backdrop of the spaghetti-western starkness of Andhra Pradesh, an environment that was doing everything to nurture the ballooning notion that the further I got from Mumbai, the further down the barbed rabbit hole I was spinning. The thorny, arid landscape, giddying in its emptiness, inspired a flailing agoraphobia in me, as I took existential respite in the sceptical humanity of the listless villages at junctions, one of which must have considered itself so forsaken by the world as to have erected an unearthly, King Kong–sized statue of the monkey god Hanuman to keep vigil over the souls of its inhabitants.
The jitters had started in Hampi, a place I remembered from my student days as a quiet, laid-back travellers’ sanctum replete with baggy-trousered tattooed hippie types who spent their days reading Shantaram in cafés and hanging themselves out to bronze over the breathtakingly large boulders scattered by the banks of the river that ran through the small town’s Jurassic terrain. I had got there from Goa via the NH4a, a road that at one point receded into a dirt track so unnavigable I had to take a long, triangular diversion that shaved several thousand dendrites off my nervous system. I approached Hampi at the witching hour, expecting the effects of the long drive to be instantly soothed by a laid-back trance soundtrack infused with the scent of burning incense and weed, but was instead subject to a sequence of official procedures enforced by the town’s constabulary that suggested I had entered a militarized zone. I met a set of resolutely closed gates and a guard who was reluctant to let me in before I convinced him I was indeed on the guest list by bandying about permutations of the word ‘permit’.
