by Tim Ewins
‘Let me off,’ Manjan shouted, but the air host told him it was not safe. ‘Let me off,’ he shouted again, but the air host told him that he wouldn’t. ‘Let me OFF!’ he screamed while the air host looked at his ticket. ‘JAN!’ Manjan cried, losing all control.
Seeing the name on the ticket, the air host felt sorry for Manjan who, mentally, was clearly not all there. ‘Look, look, let me show you something,’ he said, holding onto Manjan’s shoulder and ushering him to the window over the empty chair where Ladyjan should have been sitting. Outside the window, Manjan could see Moscow. Not just a bit of Moscow, not just St Basil’s Cathedral and not just Gorky Park, but all of Moscow, and it was tiny.
What Manjan couldn’t see was Ladyjan standing outside the airport. He couldn’t see her drop her barely lit cigarette and immediately take another one out of the packet, and he couldn’t see her slump her back against the wall.
Ladyjan loved Manjan but she couldn’t be his Saga. She couldn’t live off his parent’s money and pretend that they were meant to be together; it wasn’t right.
Manjan sat back down in a hot sweat. Saga put her hand on his leg, shook it and gave him a sympathetic look. From 15,000 feet, Manjan couldn’t see Ladyjan’s cheek slowly dampen and he couldn’t see her eyes turn a bright and painful red. From the ground, Ladyjan couldn’t see his do the same.
20
A bumble bee
Goa, India. 2016.
‘You see?’ Manjan asked.
‘Yes,’ Shakey responded, but it was clear that he didn’t. He was grinning an insanely large grin and staring at Manjan with that hint of crazy that never seemed to leave the enormous vacuum behind his eyes. Manjan noticed how Shakey’s hair seemed to sort of glow now that the sky had grown dark, probably due to some neon left over from a previous night’s vest party.
‘I had lost my queen,’ Manjan said, and Shakey let go of his intense stare with an elaborate head nod.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I get it. Yeah. So that was the last time you saw your lady-you then?’
‘My lady-me, Ladyjan, Jan,’ Manjan corrected himself. Shakey was certainly good at making nicknames. ‘No, of course not. I don’t wait on a beach for just anyone. That is the first time I lost her, the first time that I realised how much I needed her.’
Manjan noticed that Shakey had started drawing a pattern in the sand with his foot but he decided to continue anyway. ‘I spent some time in Kathmandu with Valter and Saga. I hated every second. Ugly city, polluted, crowded...’ He paused and thought. He normally liked crowded cities. Looking again at Shakey’s pattern in the sand, he mumbled, ‘It’s amazing how lonely a crowded city can feel.’
Manjan continued to watch Shakey etch out several parallel lines while he told him about the rest of his time in Nepal. He had nothing good to say about it, despite Nepal being one of the most beautiful countries he had ever visited.
After Kathmandu, the three of them had travelled to Pokhara together. Saga and Valter had left Manjan in Pokhara, deciding to go onto India quicker than originally planned. They’d asked Manjan to go with them, but he hadn’t gone, and, honestly, he barely noticed them leave. He barely noticed anything in Nepal. It was agreed that they would all meet in a month in Varanasi, India.
Pokhara is a quaint town next to a huge crystal-clear lake. There are majestic sun-peaked mountains reflecting on the water and small pink flowers growing along the banks. Every evening in Pokhara Manjan would sit on a grassy mound by himself next to the lake, watch the sunset and think of Ladyjan.
‘That sounds good,’ Shakey said, monotonal and absentmindedly staring at the sand. ‘I bet you found yourself there?’
‘No,’ Manjan answered. ‘I hated every second of it. I hated how the mountains reminded me of how big the world was, I hated how the flowers would die and wilt in the water and I hated myself every time I saw myself reflected in the lake. I hated it.’
Not sure what to say, Shakey dug deep into the sand to create another circle above his stripy sand pattern. ‘It’s amazing how loneliness can turn paradise into hell,’ Manjan said bitterly.
* * *
Manjan had met Elaine on his normally solitary mound in Pokhara. She’d sat next to him and introduced herself but Manjan had remained quiet. He didn’t want company.
In another story, it would be mentioned how stunningly attractive Elaine was. You would read about her long dark hair and the brightness of her eyes. Many details would be given about her soft smile and smooth olive skin. But Manjan didn’t see any of this and so, in his story, you won’t hear about these things.
You will hear about how Elaine wouldn’t leave Manjan alone for three days and how she mistook his silence for a sensitive soul and deep spirit. You will also hear how she drove him to the Chitwan Jungle on their fourth day together. During the two-hour drive to the Jungle, Elaine realised that Manjan did not have a deep spirit. What he had was something nearing depression. Manjan and Elaine did not spend time together in the Chitwan Jungle.
The jungle, Manjan told Shakey, was too hot, too damp, too muddy and too inhabited. At least that’s how it had seemed to him in 1973. ‘It’s amazing how lonely an inhabited jungle can feel’ he mumbled.
* * *
Shakey had stopped drawing his pattern in the sand with his foot. Manjan looked at it, took a little sip of his wine, and coughed.
‘A bumble bee,’ he said, and Shakey beamed at him having clearly not listened to Manjan’s admittedly very moustache-y thoughts on Nepal.
‘A bumble bee,’ Shakey repeated back at him, still smiling a smile so big it seemed to disappear around each cheek. ‘What do you think?’ Manjan wasn’t offended by Shakey’s brief lack of attention. In fact, he was humbled that Shakey was still sitting next to him.
‘It’s a good bumble bee,’ he answered, and Shakey looked down at his art without releasing his grin, ‘but there is only one. Bumble bees work together.’ Without hesitation Shakey dug his big toe deep into the sand next to the first bumble bee and started to create more parallel lines. Further down the beach, Prisha the cow let out a low, satisfied moo and Manjan continued.
‘That’s when I first came to India,’ he said, ‘not with Jan, Ladyjan that is, but by myself, to keep a date with Valter and Saga.’
Manjan’s first glimpse of India was at the Nepali-Indian land border. In all his time in Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Nepal he had never seen anything like the Nepali-Indian boarder. Nepal had a population of 12 million and India had a population of 554 million. From what Manjan could see as he stood in Nepal’s last few metres of calm, unpopulated land, all 554 million Indians must have decided to enjoy a day out at the border.
What struck Manjan most was the sheer contrast. Behind him were three Nepali men and six travellers. In front of him, just past the gate, stood a human wall. A mass of moving, weaving, shouting people all connected at the arms and shoulders. Everyone seemed to possess the ability not to fall into Nepal. Not one person on the Indian side stepped over the border into the country in which Manjan stood. Completely in awe of what he saw, Manjan thought of Ladyjan and how he would have loved to share this experience with her.
For the first time, taking advantage of his empty spot in Nepal and the sheer volume of people in front of him, Manjan looked to his right, just on the off-chance that she would be there. Then he looked to his left. It was unlikely, but he may as well check. She wasn’t there. He looked to his right again. A short round woman was looking back at him inquisitively. Then he looked to his left again.
He saw no sign of her.
* * *
There were now six bumble bees, all different sizes, circling the original bumble bee. Shakey was looking down at them. Something wasn’t right.
‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’re right. I don’t think bumble bees do work together. All the bumble bees I’ve ever seen are fly
ing about on their own, sniffing flowers.’
‘Ah,’ Manjan responded, slightly miffed that Shakey had nothing to say about the wall of people he’d just been talking about. He sniffed hard and the bristles on his moustache moved up and then down again. ‘That’s when they’re working. When they’re at the hive they’re together. They’re meant to be together.’
Shakey looked at his picture and quietly repeated that it didn’t look quite right and that he thought there were too many bees. He couldn’t find the original.
‘Isn’t that the truth?’ Manjan exhaled. Then he slapped both his legs with his hands and said ‘Toilet.’
In Manjan’s absence, Shakey looked down the beach to his cheering peers. He saw the neon lights circle the stars and watched a puppy walk away from the vests, away from Prisha and towards the rocks at the end of the beach. For the first time since he’d come to India, Shakey wondered what was on the other side of the rocks at the end of the beach.
‘Where were we?’ Manjan asked, sitting back down next to Shakey. The presence of red wine and the absence of vodka and Red Bull in Manjan’s hand didn’t go unnoticed.
‘Wall of people; India,’ Shakey replied.
‘Oh yes,’ Manjan continued. ‘It’s amazing how lonely being one in 554 million people can feel.’
21
A dead bull
Varanasi, India. 1975.
Manjan spat. The paan hit the floor with an echo and the man in the shower next to him made a disapproving noise. The shower was terrible – the water was brown, the floor was concrete and there was a drop toilet directly below the flow of water.
‘I’m done anyway,’ Manjan mumbled, grumpily grabbing his towel and sliding his hard-soled feet into an old pair of flip-flops.
‘Good. Go. The shower’s not for spitting. Don’t spit,’ returned the echoing voice. Manjan scowled loudly. He could hear that the voice in the next shower was chewing paan too and he would have to spit it out sometime. Whether or not he did it in the shower, Manjan doubted very much that it would be in a bin.
When he had first arrived in Varanasi two years ago, Manjan, Saga and Valter had lived three days together as tourists. They had visited temples, they had rowed up the river Ganges together and Saga and Valter had treated Manjan to his first thali (something they themselves had first tried in Gorakhpur). For a short time, Manjan had enjoyed travelling again.
But for Saga and Valter, India was end game. It was where they’d set off to get to and it was everything Saga had hoped it would be. In Varanasi Saga started to receive an increased amount of male attention. If she was being honest with herself, she sort of enjoyed it, but Valter had noticed it too and he didn’t seem so keen. After three days, once again, Valter and Saga left Manjan by himself, and once again, Manjan stopped travelling and became resident.
On his way out of the shower and back to his small brick cell of a room, Manjan nodded a hello to Kalem, who was coming in from his morning shift. Kalem lived with his wife in ‘Sunshine Hostel’ where Manjan lived, and it was Kalem who had found Manjan a job shortly after Valter and Saga’s departure.
Kalem’s English was incredibly good and he liked to show it off. He never really stopped showing it off in fact.
‘Good fish today, are you going back up to your room, yes? How was your shower? You have to stop using the shower, Jan, I’ve told you; wash at work, wash in the great Mother Ganges.’ He held his hands in the air. ‘The great Mother Ganges.’ He put them down again and shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know, wash at work. The shower here is no good for you and it is no good for me, my friend. You will never see me in this shower.’ He looked at the man sitting behind the counter. ‘This is not an insult to you, sir, you run a fine establishment, you do and you know I love to live here.’ Then he looked back to Manjan sadly. ‘You cannot go back upstairs now, Jan. You can’t just sleep all day and then sleep all night.’
‘I’ll see you tonight for a drink,’ Manjan said.
‘Yes I know, every night, a drink, and every day? A bed and nothing else, and then every night after a drink also, a bed. Work in the morning. Shower in this hole.’ He waved his arm at the shower before looking back to the man behind the counter. ‘No insult sir, no insult.’ Back to Manjan. ‘Come with me today. We will go somewhere in this beautiful city and appreciate what we have.’
Manjan thanked Kalem for the offer (an offer which he received and thanked him for every day) but told him ‘no’ and continued up to his room.
* * *
Manjan heard the same chant and ringing of bells that he heard every morning as he walked down to the river for work. He knew that a group of mourners were about to push past him on their route to the ghats, a dead body on their shoulders, and hope for a loved one’s eternal afterlife in their hearts. It was in many ways life-affirming, but in many other ways it was a constant inconvenience to Manjan. He stood to the side and watched the small parade light the darkened streets as it passed by.
Varanasi was considered a holy city, but in these early hours of the morning all Manjan could see was the dirt on the walls, the faeces on the street, and death. So much death. Down at the concrete bank he picked up as many rusty metal cages as he could carry and threw them into the rickety wooden boat that Kalem had previously assigned to him. Then, when he had paddled out to the middle of the dark river he dropped the cages into the water. Before sunrise he would be back at the hostel and Kalem would take over, collecting the cages and packing their catch into boxes to be sent to nearby towns. Holy fish from a holy river.
Once Kalem had finished his work, he would bathe in the river with his wife, several local people who they were friends with and hundreds of individuals and families at the end of a pilgrimage.
Kalem had explained the religious benefits of washing oneself in the Ganges to Manjan several times before, and he’d expressed his desire to be cremated into her one day. He firmly believed that if Manjan would just walk into the river, he might be released from the terrible slump he seemed to be in. Maybe a small splash of the mother Ganges, and his woes, his longing for the girl who had left him on an aeroplane and his partially self-inflicted loneliness would all just wash away.
After he had bathed and brushed his teeth, Kalem walked his wife to her work and went back to the hostel alone, ready to try once again to persuade Manjan not to spend all day in bed. He pushed the door open into the hostel reception and instantly noticed the quiet. He was used to the sound of running shower water and complaining voices. There was a distinct lack of activity, too – where were the towelled men sitting waiting on the hostel’s constantly damp sofa? Where were the small pile of flip-flops outside the shower rooms? Where was Manjan?
Kalem walked over to the man sitting behind the counter.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘where is everyone? No one is showering.’ He pointed to the empty shower/drop toilet rooms. ‘Alas, no one could actually shower in these showers, which is, of course, meant as not an offence to you, but they couldn’t, and now I look and see for the first time that no one is showering in these showers.’
‘Broken,’ the man sitting behind the counter said, without looking at Kalem.
‘Yes, yes they are broken,’ Kalem continued, ‘I know that. Every day I am telling you they are broken. Any shower above a toilet is broken, I agree, I do, but where are the people that feel happy bathing in them?’
‘They’re broken,’ the man said, a little more sternly, this time looking up at Kalem. ‘Water isn’t coming out of them.’
‘No. Again, sir, I agree. What comes out of these showers is not water. It is brown and smelly. The people who shower here come out worse than they went in. They should be cleaning in the Mother Ganges. You know, I’ve seen you down by her side with your children, who, I notice, do not stay here. The river is brown from the sins it is cleaning away, but these showers’, he grimaced, ‘these showers are brown from, I
have to assume, excrement?’
‘The people aren’t here,’ the man sitting behind the counter growled through gritted teeth, ‘because the showers do not work.’
Kalem smiled. If these showers were broken then Manjan couldn’t have cleaned today. He ran up the stairs to Manjan’s room and pushed open the heavy red door. He wouldn’t normally do this – he would normally knock – but when he saw an opportunity to help a friend he got carried away.
Inside, Manjan was face down in his pants on his bed. Some clothes were strewn among the paan stains on the floor and there was an inefficient fan, whirring noisily but not actually spinning, on the ceiling. Kalem made a show of waving his hand in front of his nose and pulling a face.
‘You need to wash, Jan,’ he said. ‘You should use the shower downstairs, please.’ Manjan knew that Kalem would have seen the broken showers and he knew why Kalem was in his room.
‘They’re broken,’ he said.
‘Oh no, they’re broken?’ Kalem repeated. Manjan turned over to see a huge smile spread across Kalem’s face. ‘They could be broken for a long time, Jan. My friend, you will start to smell even worse.’ There was a couple of seconds’ silence.
‘I’m not going to the river,’ Jan said, as he put more paan into his mouth.
* * *
Sunshine Hostel did not live up to its name. It was down an alley and overlooked by four taller buildings. In a very literal way, Sunshine Hostel lacked sunshine. But in a metaphorical way too, Sunshine Hostel truly was down an alley and overlooked by four taller buildings. Even the word ‘hostel’ wasn’t really appropriate, as all the residents were permanent. Occasionally a traveller would come for one night, complain and then leave in the morning, but for the most part it was the same people every day.
The facilities were shared. There were showers, a kitchen and a telephone. As a general rule, no one touched the walls to save their hands from the grease and no one used the kitchen because none of the appliances worked. Some people showered because they needed the toilet anyway and it was possible to do both at the same time, and most people didn’t use the phone because it was sticky.
