The Road to Zagora

by Richard Collins

  Pushkar was surrounded by yellow-grey hills of rock and sand with sparse semi-desert vegetation. On one side of the town was a high ridge and on the other sides were small conical hills, at least two of them topped by small temples. The town itself had no high buildings, just the usual Indian brick and concrete flat-roofed houses with some more ornate larger buildings that might have been temples. The houses were painted, as Flic described it: a cool harebell blue. The temples were white apart from one which was day-glow orange.

  There was the usual rooftop human activity, people hanging out washing or preparing food, and there were also lots of boys flying kites, practicing in advance of a festival. The kites were very light, made of paper and with a single string. They could be flown in the tiniest breeze but it took a great deal of skill to get one airborne. This we know because Flic bought one from the hotel owner’s son. They are inclined to self-destruct in the branches of trees and on buildings and are very cheap, disposable, and bought ten at a time.

  The other occupants of the rooftops were the monkeys, both the red macaques and the big grey langurs. The langurs were very handsome with black faces, hands and feet, silvery grey fur and tails longer than their bodies. They were not easily intimidated by humans and every rooftop had one or two sticks kept handy to beat them off. They were not frightened of children and if there were monkeys on the roof children kept away. We had to keep the door to the roof closed or they would come into the building. I spent a lot of time watching them.

  We walked up two of the little hills on the edge of Pushkar and had two quite different experiences. On the first one a group of local boys harassed us asking over and over again for money and refusing to go away. It was a very unpleasant experience and they failed to arouse any sympathy from us because they were aggressively rude and didn’t look particularly poor. The other hill had a temple on the top and we walked up in the company of friendly pilgrims with whom we shared the heat, the exercise and a sense of camaraderie.

  From Pushkar we had a day out travelling by bus to nearby Adjmer. The people there were mostly unpleasant. Flic describes it well:

  we walked through the park and a boy dived towards Richard’s feet and started brushing his shoes. Everyone seemed interested in us. We left the park to go to the ruins, ending up in small streets, gutters full of foul water, horrible bristly pigs and dogs and rats, people begging, one small alley led to another until there was one that we just couldn’t face going down, so smelly and dirty. Everyone we passed seemed to want something from us or be laughing at us. Our way back to the bus station was better: we walked back down an interesting street full of shops. Bowls of rose petals and marigolds and gold embroidered cloths were being sold, shoe shops selling glittery pointed toed sandals, jewellery shops, butchers with live hens under the counter and plucked ones above, tea shops, cafés with giant woks of boiling oil and floating pakoras, jalebi shining in honey, more giant woks with gas flames below boiling gallons of milk reducing it to sweet gunge to mix with coconut and blackened pots on bricks of fried foods, puri, gulabjumun.

  Before we left Pushkar we rented bikes for the day and cycled out into the countryside. There was scrubby semi-desert but there were green areas too. We passed by large fields of marigolds and rose bushes, grown just for their flowers and petals, used for decorative and religious purposes. Small trucks went by carrying people dressed up in turbans, pointed shoes, sarees, as if off to a fancy dress party. Went past some groups of school children who were horrible. Asking for pens, trying to grab our bikes and slap us, one boy got hold of my bike rack, Richard shouted at him and he let go. It felt like a racist attack.

  And now it’s coming back to me – how we loved India and hated it too. I think our first experiences were tough. We weren’t always happy and sometimes we were counting the days, looking forward to our flights to Kerala, in the south, where people were said to be friendlier. Before we went south we experienced two more Rajasthan cities, Bundhi and Udaipur, where we spent Christmas and New Year respectively. But India is tiring and we need to take a break. After a while we’ll forget the hassles and miss the noise and colour. Then we’ll be drawn back. Really, it can happen.

  L is for Lucca (Italy)

  When our first born son, Kit, was two years old we went cycle touring in Tuscany. We averaged fifteen miles per day, cycling very slowly up the hills and slowly down too, because there was so much to see. Kit had a special child seat on the back of Flic’s bike where he was strapped in and could fall asleep and he had a tiny little seat on the crossbar of my bike where he had to lean forward and hold onto the handlebars. He was a chubby, dreamy little boy and was happy watching the world go by. And then, at the end of the day, we would check in at a cheap hotel and he would bounce up and down on the bed, full of energy, in contrast to his mum and dad, who were exhausted from a day’s cycling. It was spring, sunny after a period of rain, and everything was fresh and green.

  We cycled along the top of the city walls in Lucca. Then we came down into the town to buy food for a picnic. We bought a tub of green gunge; it looked nice but we had no idea what it was. It tasted great and we found out the name of it later – pesto de genovese. Now you can buy it here.

  In those days we lived in Bristol. We both worked part-time and both had days at home with Kit. I used to take him out around the city on a bicycle, usually Flic’s bike, that had a more comfortable seat for him. We went to places like the botanical gardens at Leigh Woods or the park at Brandon Hill. It was a very special time and I feel very lucky and privileged to have been able to spend those days with him, a young child, excited by every new day. As a parent you get a vicarious pleasure and see the world afresh through the eyes of your children.

  13

  Difficult Times

  My worst moment ever. A hot sunny afternoon in the summer of 1989. A tiny patch of garden next to the car park at Morriston Hospital, Swansea. Flic has come out from the ward in her nightdress and sits on a bench. She is both physically and mentally very weak after suffering a brain haemorrhage. I have to go to the car to get something and I leave our four month old baby Peter on her lap and four year old Kit by her side. When I return I find that she hasn’t been able to hold Peter and has dropped him on the ground. He is crying, she is crying and Kit is crying too.

  Three weeks into our new life in Wales Flic had got up in the night and collapsed in the bathroom. She was rushed to hospital in Aberystwyth where she remained unconscious and semiconscious for a few days. Then she was taken to the Morriston. Two weeks passed before a young doctor called me into an office and told me she had a brain tumour. He was awkward, seemingly untrained in the job of breaking bad news and said that it could be one of a number of things. I had to keep asking questions to get a less vague diagnosis. Perhaps that’s the way they do it, to lead you to the devastating news gradually and when you are ready to hear the answers you ask the right questions: Is it cancer? Yes. Is she likely to die? Yes. Quite soon? Yes.

  I went back to Flic’s bedside and we joked and laughed a little, as you do when things get really bad. She was still very weak and, as far as I remember, I didn’t bring up the subject of her diagnosis. I drove back down the M4 to Wiltshire thinking that here, on the motorway, I had to keep it together. This was not the time or the place to go to pieces. There were my two children to look after. And then I had to break the news to Flic’s parents. And so it went on, emotional breakdown was not an option. Others could burst into tears but I had things to do and I just had to hold on.

  They discovered that Flic had a very rare, fast growing cancer called choriocarcinoma and whizzed her up to Charing Cross hospital in London. There she had brain surgery to remove the tumour. I remember going to the post operative ward and mentioning that they were bringing the chemo up to start her on it immediately. They didn’t believe me. One of the nurses admitted later that they thought she would die. They started introducing the chemo through a tube that they had inserted into her brain. The cancer was very
fast growing but very easily treated. It was a kill or cure moment, the most likely outcome being a further haemorrhage and death. It was then that she contracted meningitis...

  I have to tell you that now I have come back to this short chapter, knowing that there is so much more to tell. But I can’t say much and you can guess why. Time travel is not always an enjoyable experience. Other grim memories of those days? Yes, a few. Peter was in the children’s ward for a couple of nights at the start. Then I went and got him. I went into Boots in Aberystwyth and bought a baby’s bottle, powdered milk and sterilising tablets. Then the three of us travelled around staying in different people’s houses, three cardboard boxes of clothes in the back of the car labelled: Richard, Kit and Peter. We went to the hospital to see Flic; we went to her parents’ house and stayed there; we came back to Wales from time to time.

  Flic and I still owned a house in Bristol and had difficult tenants who would not pay the rent. Meanwhile the awful landlady of the house we were renting in Wales told me off for things like sticking a photo of Flic to the wall and damaging the wallpaper. I remember one awful day hanging out in a dirty park in London while Flic had her second lot of brain surgery, not knowing if I would see her alive again. Maybe that’s enough.

  Reader, she survived, that’s the important thing. There was a time when it looked like she was not going to regain her mental faculties and I would have to look after the three of them. But Flic did make a complete recovery and we drove back to Wales after her last dose of chemo in February 1990.

  Now we were a happy family of four living in a beautiful part of the world. And it was good. Family life was very fulfilling and rewarding. But planet mum is a very different place from planet dad and I can’t say that Flic and I were close. There were more difficulties to come. I loved my family but it didn’t stop me from loving someone else for a while. I wrote a novel and, when it was shortlisted for a major literary award, was famous for a few weeks. Somehow Flic and I endured. The years brought us closer to knowing and understanding each other. And then I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

  One of Flic’s first impulses was to run away. She didn’t. And here’s the strange thing: I suspect that we have been closer and happier in our relationship in the last few years than at any other time.

  Together we brought up our two boys and gave them as happy a childhood and start in life as we could. We have been lovers, friends and travelling companions off and on for nearly thirty years. There have been good times and bad. There have been times when we have had two very different ideas about the state of our relationship. Now, alongside the other roles, Flic is becoming a carer. Someone who looks after the needs of a person who can’t look after themselves. Maybe it’s OK. The children have grown up and she gets some fulfilment out of looking after me instead. She tells me that my vulnerability makes her feel closer to me. When she wants to get away I can get a friend to stay and help – she can still have some independence.

  From my point of view, however, it’s not ideal. If you were to ask me about the things I have lost since being ill I would name independence as the most important. And, while I think of Flic as the ideal (well, let’s say very, very nearly ideal) life partner or travelling companion, I begin to lose confidence that she might feel the same about me. There are big time self-esteem issues for someone with a disability. And so it is that I dream, from time to time, about Flic going off with some other guy. Dreams tell you about things going on in the more hidden parts of the mind. Sometimes it’s stuff you need to know, sometimes things you would prefer to remain hidden. I suspect that for anyone suffering from a newly acquired disability loss of self-esteem is a big issue. I don’t know what anyone can do about it.

  M is for Madrid (Spain)

  We were in Spain visiting friends in March 2012. Everywhere we went the light was pure and clear and there were strange dark patches and lines on the ground. Next to a tree, for example, there would be a perfect representation of the trunk and the spreading branches and the twigs marked out on the pavement. I took photographs of these horizontal facsimiles and noted that they moved and changed shape during the course of the day. I had some memory of seeing such things before but it seemed to come from a long time ago. Then I understood; they were shadows and were associated with sunlight, something we had not experienced in its pure form for a while. Certainly the whole of January and February had been cloudy in Wales, sunshine and shadows a distant memory. How nice it was to be in Spain.

  And right next to our hotel in Madrid there was another miracle, the jardin vertical, a garden growing sideways out of the gable end of our building. It was by the entrance of an arts centre called Caixa Forum. We went in and looked at the temporary exhibitions and we also walked around the corner and visited the Museo del Reina Sofía, famous for housing Picasso’s Guernica. Madrid has a handful of big time art galleries and some fine architecture. But what I remember best of all was the clear light, the early spring sunshine, and the wonderful shadows.

  14

  Distant Relatives

  We are back on the second of the six major adventures Flic and I have had since the onset of my debilitating illness. Rajasthan has been extraordinary but tough, too unpleasant too often. Until Bundhi, that is. I recommend Bundhi as a place to stay. It has all the colour and life and foreignness of a north Indian town and the usual compliment of palaces and forts. But it is just a little off the tourist route and people are easier going, both the townsfolk and the people in the countryside around. They are friendly and helpful.

  Here are a few words I wrote while we were in Bundhi:

  6 am. Up on the hotel roof. Still dark, a tiny slither of old moon rising, two Muslim calls to prayer, then a third. Lights on, a radio somewhere, lorries on the main road, people are starting their day. A man chases monkeys off his rooftop as he did yesterday. A red-faced monkey sits near me for a while before moving on. Others are climbing down the walls of the fort and the palace and making their way into town. A bell rings somewhere for puja.

  8-ish. The sun is up now and a Canadian man called Phil comes onto the roof and says ‘Merry Christmas’. It sounds so out of place here that I laugh out loud

  9-ish and onwards. A tiny (they’re all tiny), colourful-sari-wearing woman walks down the street carrying a tin bowl of dried cow-dung on her head. Another carries firewood. She has bare feet. Motorbikes pass by, brass vessels fixed fore and aft carrying fresh milk into town. In the market place people sell piles of clover for giving to the sacred cows that are standing nearby patiently waiting. People sell big cheeses – but no, Flic is offered a taste of one and it’s some sort of sugar. Others sell marigold garlands and rose petals for religious offerings.

  Maybe 10am. Stop in a little chai shop for a glass of sugary tea. The proprietor shows Flic a blue-painted cupboard inside of which is a shrine containing a photo of himself and a man in a loincloth, a mirror and some pctures of Hindu gods. Skin-lightening cream sachets hang overhead. The man sitting next to me points to the proprietor, an ordinary enough looking man, ‘Guru’, he says. He does some stuff with his hands that I guess is a blessing. A little way down the street a goat has a word painted on its side in Hindi script. Pigs feed on a pile of rubbish. There are cows with painted horns and a crippled beggar by the side of the road.

  11-ish. Now we’re by a lake with enormous kingfishers, herons, stilts, lily-trotters, egrets and lapwings. Green parrots in the trees. Professional laundrymen beating clothes on the water’s edge. And a young man whose limited English includes the words ‘Santa Claus’.

  1 o’clock. Lunch of Indian junk food in a public park. Bulbuls and mynah birds perch on the seats waiting for crumbs. Palm trees and bougainvillea. Two drongos. Grey babblers with fierce blue eyes. A view across the lake to the palace where Kipling wrote Kim. The café plays Bollywood hits. A tractor passes by, dressed up in tinsel (but not because it’s Christmas – they’re always like that here). It tows a trailer carrying about 20 men and women. Th
e guys are on their way to the Improbable Turban of the Year Show. A family come over to look at Flic’s drawing.

  3.30 Back in our hotel room for a siesta after walking back through the part of town where every house is painted blue. A holiday atmosphere, perhaps it’s a special day here too. People are politer, less demanding, friendlier here in Bundi than in other towns. It’s busy, noisy and squalid but it’s beautiful in places. The palace is gorgeous: fanciful architecture, delicate stonework, extraordinary murals, all in a state of decay. There are huge wild bees nests hanging under the arches on the south side. When it’s a little cooler I will go to the internet café and type this up.

  I rarely made notes or kept a diary when we were travelling; there was just too much to put down. And I don’t think I got around to typing up those Bundhi notes and sharing them with people at home. And I never told anyone about my close encounter with one of the palace bees.

  The palace on the hill above Bundhi is owned by the local maharaja, the kind of guy who maybe had the first Rolls Royce in Rajasthan and counts Prince Charles among his personal friends. He now lives down in a smaller, less ostentatious palace in the town and the old palace has been neglected for many decades. He recently opened a large part of it to the public and we visited it twice. The murals are amazing. Imagine rooms decorated from floor to ceiling, and across the ceiling too, with patterns and illustrations of mythical, historical and religious scenes that have been hand painted with the kind of detail that you would expect in a miniature. The windows are without glass and the rooms are open to the elements leaving the paintings to decay gracefully.