by Frank Kusy
‘But the first day out, they were all closed for a national holiday, and the driver says, “On the way home, I need some shopping.” He stops somewhere and loads up the whole taxi—from the boot right the way to the back of Derek’s head—with coal. So the next day they drive out again and the driver suddenly announces, “We cannot go this way, we must make detour.” And they end up at a village where the driver starts selling coal. Derek couldn’t believe it. He started shouting at him in broad Yorkshire, “You bas-tard! I’ve paid five hundred fooking dollars for this fooking taxi, and you’re using it to sell fooking coal?”’
Spud shook his head, chuckling. ‘Yeah,’ he concluded. ‘I saw him going outside the Arya Niwas, but only to check plane fares back to Wigan.’
The following morning, over breakfast, Spud met George for the first time. To my astonishment, the two short, stroppy individuals took to each other instantly. The reason? All they ever talked about was business.
‘How did you guys get on with Girish?’ asked George. ‘Man, he’s really hard work. Won’t budge at all on prices.’
‘That’s where you need a partner,’ Spud said, grinning. ‘We always do the double-act on Girish. I hit him on a technicality, and Frank hits him on the price. He can’t take us both at once!’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘he hates it when we gang up on him. “I tell it to the Koo-see!” he protests when Spud complains about something and “I tell it to the takala!” when I start moaning. In the end, he just loses it completely and starts shouting: “I am only one man! I am not six arms and eight legs!”’
Waiting for us downstairs was my old friend Ram. I had bought Ram, a handicapped local with both legs paralysed, three camels a few years before, and had set him up in business – with an office just below the Pushkar Palace.
Ram was happy to see me again, but was suffering from a ‘monkey problem’. A large red-bottomed monkey had just run off with one of his crutches and he was stranded at reception, unable to retrieve it. Norath, one of the waiters, had to pay five rupees to get it back. That was how much the bananas cost to coax the monkey off the rooftop.
‘If I had to change places with anyone in Pushkar,’ Spud mused, ‘it would be with the Monkey King of the Rooftops. In my next life, I’m coming back as him.’
‘Why’s that, then?’ I asked.
‘Because all the female monkeys raid the market for vegetables, and every time they bring him a cauliflower they’re rewarded with a shag. I watched him last time I was here, and in any one hour that monkey gets an average of four and a half shags!’
Later on, in the Om Shiva Cafe, we all hooked up with Ram again. The crutch-bound camel-man was looking rather grand this evening, wearing ruby-encrusted earrings, a richly-tapestried waistcoat, and an expensive, rainbow turban. He was also sporting a huge black beard with curled and waxed mustachios.
Something, however, was not quite right. Ram was as good-natured as ever, nodding and smiling in all the right places, but he seemed strangely removed from the conversation. Especially when Spud was talking. At the end of a very long monologue from Spud in which he described his humble origins in Ireland, his short stint in the army, his long struggle to establish himself as a plumber in south London, and his lucky inheritance of a market stall from his eldest sister, Ram just looked at him and said, ‘Whut?’
Yes, Ram had not understood one word Spud had said. Spud spoke too fast for him, it seemed, and he mumbled his English. Mortified, Spud started to repeat his story at a snail’s pace, but soon gave up. Ram’s beatific, uncomprehending smile was getting on his nerves. To remove that smile, Spud viciously remarked that Ram’s new beard was ‘pretentious’.
Ram simply nodded and said, ‘thank you.’
‘Actually,’ I quietly informed Spud, ‘Ram doesn’t give two figs what you think of his beard. All he’s interested in is becoming Mister Desert in Jaiselmer’s forthcoming Camel Fair. He believes the only reason he didn’t win the title last year was that he was the only contestant without a beard.’
George frowned, puzzled. ‘Why does he have to be Mister Desert?’
‘Oh, don’t you know? Ram got picked out of the crowd last month by Patrick Swayze and landed a bit part in the film, City of Joy. After that, everybody expects him to be Mister Desert. He’s so famous now he doesn’t have anywhere else to go!’
Chapter 12
Ram, Ram, the Camel Man
Back in my room, I told Spud and George the full story of Ram-ji or ‘brother Ram’. When he and I had first met three years before, back in 1989, he hadn’t been famous at all. In fact, he was a social pariah, constantly being shuffled along by local policemen. Even his own father wouldn’t speak to him.
I had been introduced to Ram by Maria, my then girlfriend, who had said, ‘I’ve just been speaking to this guy. Go and talk to him. He’s special.’ She was right. Ram’s English wasn’t good, but there was a certain something—his aura of steely determination perhaps—that made me want to help him.
The thing that had most impressed me about Ram was that he didn’t want help. And that, in India, made him a rarity. He was a beautiful man, with warm moist eyes, a winning smile, and charming innocence. He was also a fierce Rajput, far too proud to beg. On first contact he was seething with rage. His fury was not so much directed against policemen (though he detested them), but at the bad cards fate had dealt him. For despite his education and obvious intelligence, he could not get a job or expect a good marriage. A doctor had given him a bad injection when he was a child and he had contracted polio. Now, he was crippled in both legs and had to get around on crutches.
‘I know you don’t want help,’ I had said, ‘but if there was one thing you could do that wouldn’t require the use of your legs, what would it be?’
Ram, after lengthy consideration, replied: ‘Well, I can ride camel!’
And so ‘Ram’s Desert Experience’, Pushkar’s very first camel-trek company was born. The deal was simple. I bought Ram three camels (total cost £100). In return Ram took me and my friends for free treks into the desert whenever we hit town. It was the only way Ram would accept my ‘charity’.
I had no doubt that Ram would be successful. Pushkar was surrounded by mile upon mile of golden sand dunes all the way to Pakistan. And since every western guidebook was busy directing travellers to Jaiselmer for camel treks—not Pushkar—Ram would have no competition.
For his part, Ram saw me as an answer to a prayer. After so much bad luck in his life, he had come to Pushkar that particular day to implore Brahma, the god of the Lake, for some divine sign of favour. And I, apparently, had been it.
Brahma, Ram informed me, was one of the three main deities of the Hindu religion. He was the Creator of the universe and, together with Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, represented the three basic processes in human existence: birth, life, and death. Unlike the other two deities, however, Brahma had only one temple in India, and it was right here in Pushkar.
‘Brahma come, Brahma make world, Brahma go away,’ explained Ram.
Hindus didn’t have much faith in an absent god.
Ram, however, along with a steady trickle of pilgrims into Pushkar, placed a lot of faith in Brahma. Brahma was the guy you prayed to if you wanted something new in your life (a child, a house, a spouse). And what Ram wanted more than anything in the world was a completely new life, a life in which he was not judged by his disability but by his merits as a human being.
According to Ram, Pushkar was ‘extra special’ to Brahma. The legend went that a lotus blossom (pushpa) once fell from the hand (kar) of Brahma while he was searching for a place to perform his purification ritual (yagna), and in the spot where it landed a lake sprang up. But having made Pushkar his home, Brahma had made the huge mistake of upsetting his wife, Savatri, by getting a substitute bride, Gayatri, to help him bless his new temple. Gayatri was an untouchable, an outcast, and in order to make her holy she was, in Ram’s words, ‘put into the mouth of a cow and
removed from the anus’. Drastic, but apparently effective.
When Brahma’s wife, Savitri, finally appeared, she was not amused. So not amused, in fact, that she placed a curse on Brahma. ‘Take Pushkar!’ she said. ‘It’s yours! But it’s the only home you’ll ever have!’
With this, she stormed up a hill behind the lake and had been sulking up there ever since. Brahma tried to cheer her up with a temple of her own, right at the top of the hill, but – as Ram reliably informed me – she still wasn’t happy.
Ram and I crawled up to see her, a painfully slow hike up a 2000 year old stone stairway, and came upon a small white structure offering spectacular panoramic views over the lake below. Before us, way down below, lay the tiny town of Pushkar and its holy lake, while to the rear, the white, undulating sands stretched as far as the eye could see. When we’d had our fill of the spectacle, I helped Ram back down across the dunes so we could visit the Brahma temple itself. This was a bright Disneyish effort – a riot of blue, green, yellow, and red paint, topped with a pink dome. The temple was immaculately clean and sat within a small enclosure, backing directly onto the desert. Ram pointed out the hans (goose) symbol of Brahma engraved above the entrance, as well as Brahma’s animal carrier: a small silver turtle. As the day drew to a close, the sun hanging low in the purple sky, we walked to the rear of the temple for picture-postcard views of the desert as well as of the high Savitri Temple we had just ascended.
It had been a special day. A surreal kind of pilgrimage during which two men from completely different worlds and backgrounds forged a friendship that would change their lives forever.
The next morning Spud and I rolled out of town, bound for Jaipur. We’d had our short break and were looking forward to going home and cashing in our goods.
‘Fuck me!’ gloated Spud. ‘We might become rupee millionaires sooner than we thought!’
But when we returned to London in March 1992, we hit a full-blown recession. Somehow, during our short six week absence, the whole of the UK had been gripped by the worst financial crisis since the war. Banks, offices, and shops were closing down daily, and as a sign of the times only four of the thirty market stalls at St Martin’s were still operational.
‘This is serious,’ I said, battling panic. ‘I hope to God that Liberty’s still wants their bedspreads. Half our money is tied up with their order.’
Spud’s entire head turned purple. ‘They’d better want it,’ he said grimly, ‘or I’m going to torch the place!’
But Liberty’s reneged on the deal.
‘We still want the stuff,’ stuttered their top buyer, flushed with apology, ‘but in the current economic climate, we simply can’t afford it.’
Spud’s particular shade of purple darkened. ‘What do you mean you can’t afford it?’ he raged. ‘We’ve just travelled thousands of miles and spent thousands of pounds on your say-so, so you’d better afford it, or I’m going to stuff each of these fucking bedspreads up your arse!’
The buyer went white with shock and pressed the alarm button.
‘Come away, mate,’ I suggested. ‘There’ll be swarms of security guards here in a minute. We don’t need the hassle.’
With two tons of old embroidery lying around unclaimed, and with no money to pay for its storage, I was forced to leave home. On Spud’s insistence, I finally stopped living with my mother in Enfield and bought a house (which I could ill-afford) close to Spud in Peckham – a house that instantly became a warehouse, full of Dexion shelving to accommodate the vast surplus of imported goods.
The only good thing about the recession, the one thing that saved us from disaster, was the influx of rich Americans looking for cheap breaks in London. One such American, the owner of a large textile gallery in New York, turned up at St Martin’s market and spotted one of Damoder’s beautiful old bedspreads hanging up behind my stall.
‘Gee!’ she exclaimed. ‘The folks back home will eat this stuff up! Have you got any more?’ I promptly marched her over to Peckham and sold her every piece I had, and at a far better price than Liberty’s had offered. Even Spud was impressed.
‘Nice one!’ he said happily. ‘One day bank-rupert, the next quids-in!’
‘No thanks to you,’ I thought sourly. I was coming around to the opinion that—just like the Colonel in Jaipur—the bigger Spud’s plans got, the more likely they were to end in disaster, and the more likely I would be left to mop things up. Yes, we had been lucky this time. But what if it happened again?
Chapter 13
Recession? What Recession?
Many businesses fold or at least cut back in the face of a recession. Spud decided to expand.
‘It’s a golden opportunity,’ he told me. ‘Nobody else has been buying in India, so nobody else will have stock.’
The fact that nobody had money to buy more stock never occurred to him. I shook my head, bemused. ‘We’ve already got two whole houses bulging with stuff. How do you intend to sell it?’
Spud pointed out of his kitchen window, indicating a shiny new van. ‘I’m going to invade England. That’s how!’
His plan, as far as I could make out, was to wholesale to every hippy shop in the country.
‘Okay,’ argued Spud when I frowned, ‘we’ll make far less money wholesaling. Less than half of what we made in the markets. But think of it this way: we’ll turn over far more stuff in far less time. Anything we have left we’ll punt out to the festivals in the summer.’
With that he was gone. The big new van rolled out of his driveway one morning and didn’t return for a month. During that time, the only news I had of him were the frequent phone calls I got from shops that Spud had terrorised.
Spud had a unique sales technique, I discovered: fast and furious. Upon entering any new town or city, he drove slowly around it, scouting any possible shops which might buy his products. Once he located the biggest one he barged into it, informing the reluctant owner, ‘If you don’t buy off me, I’ll just go up the road and sell to someone else.’
This was the last thing they wanted to hear, of course, so he got his foot in the door. If they still refused to entertain him, he stayed exactly where he was. He stood in front of the counter looking manic—one arm full of clothing and the other full of jewellery—until all the customers had fled and the owner nervously enquired, ‘So what have you got then?’ It was as close to bullying as Spud could get without being arrested.
I didn’t have a sales technique. I was content behind my stall, serving people who actually wanted something, and I didn’t want to impose myself on reluctant shopkeepers. Spud found this very frustrating.
‘I’ve got this partner, Frank,’ he told one client in Folkestone, ‘and I’ve been trying for two years to get him to enter any shop, which he refuses to do. So I’ve made all the contacts, and he’s made none. I can’t seem to drag him off his bloody market stall!’
Later on, when I did go wholesaling, the same client told me: ‘We were so glad when you turned up. Spud was a sweaty little thug. He flogged us these huge silk shorts, saying: “They’re very popular with big women because it stops their fat thighs chafing against each other.” We only bought some so we could get rid of him!’
Spud collected shops like some people collect postage stamps. He had a map of Britain on his office wall, and he stuck pins in it every time he returned from a fresh scouting party. A fierce army of one, he first attacked London, then the South Coast, then Wales and the West Country, and finally the Midlands and the North. Like the Romans of old, he got as far as Hadrian’s Wall and stopped just short of invading Scotland.
By now, around the end of 1992, he had over two hundred shops to sell to—like two hundred little occupational castles—and finally proclaimed himself satisfied. Of course sustaining this far-flung empire was too much for Spud to do alone. He began employing agents to sell for him, and he bought a fleet of vans for the purpose. The biggest shops, the ones who spent the most money and kept the whole thing afloat, he saved for me.
Spud discovered I was his best salesman quite by accident. One late night in 1992 he was due to drive down West for a whole week’s wholesaling, but he couldn’t drive anywhere that night due to a swollen testicle.
‘I’m genitally disadvantaged,’ he woke me to say, ‘so you’re going to have to do all my calls this week.’
I wasn’t happy. I hated driving, especially at night, and I had never been behind the wheel of Spud’s giant delivery van before. I also had no experience at wholesaling, and didn’t know if I would be any good at it. I grudgingly set out at 3am, sleepy-headed, heavy-hearted, and terrified of motorways.
I needn’t have worried. The first shop, in Bournemouth, invited me in and went through my van while I slept upstairs in their ‘Lama room’. They only woke me up to stuff a cheque for two grand in my hand.
‘Well, that was easy,’ I thought. ‘Maybe I can do this job after all!’
Turns out the shop had been so grateful that Spud hadn’t turned up, they had bought twice as much stuff as usual. And it was the same everywhere I went. My negative salesmanship—the fact that I didn’t seem to want to sell anybody anything—was so opposite to Spud’s approach that I was an immediate success.
This trip was my first time off a market stall in over two years, and I surprised myself by really enjoying it. The people I met were so friendly it didn’t even seem like work. But when I phoned Spud to tell him of my Bournemouth success I was tersely deflated.
‘You only saw one shop?’ he grumbled. ‘How are you going to fit the other twelve in?’
I slammed down the receiver.
