Noon

04/26/20 • 5 min

Noon

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

The sun is at its highest point. I am at my lowest. I walked and walked until now I just have to stop. My clothes are soaked with sweat. A prickly heat rash rages round my waist, across my shoulders, through my armpits and round my heels. It stings and it itches, but only when I think about it. The difficult task is to relax the mind when it is twisted and angry and summon up the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed. Succeed at that and the itching fades fast.

I’m tired. Ferocious heat. Thirsty. Force myself to drink warm, chemical-flavoured water. Eyelids so heavy. Want to lie down and sleep. Ten minutes, an hour. It doesn’t matter: there are more hours in this day than I can walk. At home, time is precious. Out here, I have cut everything unimportant so I have bought back time. I have as much of it as I need.

I’m irritable, impatient, out of love with India. Walking immerses me so deep that at times I feel I am drowning in it all, in the India described so well by Naipaul, “the broken roads and footpaths, the brown gasoline-and-kerosene haze adding an extra sting to the fierce sunlight, mixing with the street dust and coating the skin with grit and grime; the day-long cicada-like screech, rising and falling, of the horns of the world’s shabbiest buses and motorcars.”

I’m on the outskirts of a village. Pink bougainvillea flowers form tangled arches over people’s doorways. I peel off my clammy shirt, remove my shoes and socks and flop into the shade of a bus shelter. The floor is covered in litter, broken glass, tobacco spit and peanut shells. I don’t care. I sit cross- legged to keep the pressure off the soles of my feet. They feel as though they are on fire. Sweat pools in my Adam’s apple. Mid- day, middle of the journey, mid life crisis: hell, it’s been hard to get this far. Looking back, I feel I have done so little. So much remains to be done. Looking ahead down the road it is hard to convince myself to keep going, that things won’t always be this hard. But I cannot give in: I’m committed to the day now and this filthy bus shelter is no place to call The End. I can’t give in, but nor do I think I can make it to the end.

A very poor couple approach. I suspect they are homeless. Their movements are slow. They sit down next to me without speaking. They are sitting time away. The old man has a long beard and matted white hair. The lady is as fragile as a bird, old and hunched with empty eyes. Their clothes are faded. They chew paan6, a mild narcotic. Their few remaining teeth are stained red. They spit continuously, a stream of red saliva splashing at my feet. It’s too hot to care. I’m broken.

The old woman attempts to beg from me. It is the first time this has happened. She holds out her empty hand and gestures with her cloudy eyes. It is hard to see such poverty. But it is also alarmingly easy to ignore. What would happen if I gave her a hundred pounds? What impact would it have on this couple? It wouldn’t really be a big deal for me. I can earn another hundred quid sometime. But I don’t do it. I don’t even summon the energy to smile politely. I turn my eyes and look away.

In the distance an engine ticks over. I hear a sweeping broom and the rattle of a water pump. These small sounds accentuate the quietness. The three of us sit in silence. I wonder what they are thinking. The lady rubs her husband’s back, tenderly. She stands and walks slowly away down the road. A while later she returns, carrying a cup of chai given by a kinder soul than me. She hands it to her husband. And he takes the cup, and drinks. She sits back on her haunches. Not a word has been spoken. My life, my walk feels stupid.

I summon the resolve to continue and lift my bag back up onto my shoulders. The heat thumps me as I step out from the shade. I smile at the elderly couple. I’m light-headed, tired and weak. They smile back at me. I walk on.

Noon

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

Previous Episode

People

People

“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”

The people I meet are a highlight of the journey. I meet good people, kind people, funny people, mad and sad and one or two bad people. But mostly it is a random selection of good people. Many invite me to their homes for chai, for food or to spend the night.

One day a stylish man stops his motorbike to chat for a few minutes. His hair is swept back, he has a big bushy beard and a smear of red paste on his forehead. He wears three gold rings and a chunky gold necklace. His pretty wife and daughter are perched on the back. They are sharing the headphones of an iPod Shuffle. He works in a bank. He hands me his business card.

“Come and drink tea when you reach my town!” he calls as the family hoot, wave and roar away.

I take up the invitation. The bank is the first air-conditioned building I have been into in India. I am aware of how dirty I am. I find my new friend at a computer, data-entering a pile of cheques. My shoes stink. He smiles in welcome, shakes my hand and slaps me on the shoulder.

“Let us drink tea.”
I want to ask some of the questions I’ve been unable to answer walking through areas where nobody spoke much English. About rural poverty and India’s rising power, about the caste system, inequality and water wars. But he is not interested in any of that. He only wants to know about England. It’s good to be reminded that my normal life, my normal home and normal country are as interesting as anywhere else when seen with fresh and open eyes. The barrage of questions is charmingly frank.

“Are you having love marriages or arranged marriages? If your father does not like your girl will he ban you from his home? Are you circumcised? How many castes are there in England? Are you Christian? Are English villages like Indian villages? Do villages have water and electricity as well as the towns? Does it really rain everyday?”

I still have not seen an angry person. Indians seem to share the same mild characteristics as their revered cows. But one day I see an Indian cry. The sight jolts me. A middle-aged man, his spectacles askew, a friend’s arm round his shoulder, pushes through the market crowd. His eyes are shiny and numb with grief. Surrounded by the noise and rush of so many strangers it is easy to forget that each has an individual story.

Most of my memories of people are from the briefest of connections. Moments that flash through the gulfs between our lives and simply connect on a human level. A woman, about my age, is running down the road towards me. She is wearing a red and orange sari. It is rare to see Indians running, particularly women. I like the way her gold bracelets jangle and the self- conscious look on her face as she runs. I smile. She catches my smile, grins back at me, but keeps running. Two people on the same road at the same time. Our lives meet, but in opposite directions and then we pass out of each other’s life for ever.
[NOTE FROM AL: This is the lady on the front cover of the book.]

Next Episode

Religion

Religion

“I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul.”

Religion is an integral part of India. Even my river is a goddess, revered at shrines along her course. Pilgrims come from all over to bathe in her sacred waters.

Every day I walk past temples, churches and mosques. I share the road with sadhus, wandering holy men. We walk side by side in amiable silence. I pass men dressed as gods (perhaps gods dressed as men too). Buses and cars are decorated with favoured deities, often the elephant-headed Ganesh. Roadside shrines depict lurid scenes from the Vedas.

I encounter so many festivals, ceremonies and wedding parades. There are celebrations of gods and goddesses and boisterous village trumpet bands practising for their celebrations of gods and goddesses. Flowers are scattered, garlands of marigolds draped round necks and girls tie fragrant white jasmine into their shining black hair. There is music, always music, with men thumping drums enthusiastically to the excited skirling of pipes.

Market stalls often cluster at the entrance to the village temple complex, the hub of community life. I pause to buy bananas. There is an enormous trench fire outside the temple, its pulsating heat stronger even than the sun. The air shimmers. Music blasts from crackling speakers. Suddenly about fifty singing and dancing children appear down the street. They are wet and muddy and are holding leafy branches in each hand. On the command of chaperoning adults, who pretend to beat them with sticks, the children stop, prostrate themselves, then stand again and continue dancing forward. They dance past me, into the temple, and are gone. The music stops. As so often happens I have no idea what I just saw. Nobody speaks enough English to be able to enlighten me. If I travel completely unprepared, I must accept that the price of surprised delight is occasional bemusement.

I stop at a mosque. The imam is rocking back and forth in the doorway, quietly reciting the Koran with three young pupils. He breaks off the class to chat and asks me to take his photo. Then, to my surprise, he whips out an iPhone and takes my photo. He enjoys having the modern gadget whilst the foreigner just has a clunky, old-fashioned camera. Even his beard is more impressive than mine. The imam gestures at the mosque and explains that it is very old,

“The mosque is 200 years old; three generations. My phone is 3G and my mosque is 3G!”

I happen across a Christian ashram and am invited to a service. The chapel is in a wood beside the river. It is plainly furnished. The congregation of about twenty people are squashed together on wooden benches. On the altar is a wooden cross and a bronze dish of fire. The priest sits cross-legged on the floor. His orange robes are vivid in the narrow strip of sunlight from the door, left ajar to allow a slight breeze.

I listen to the birds singing outside. The ashram is a good place for sedately, serenely looking for yourself whilst at peace. I am sun-fried, half asleep and half entranced as the chants, candle light, incense and gentle goodness wash over me. But I will be on my way shortly. I look for myself by hurtling, hurting and sweating.

I understand snatches of the service as the priest jumps around between languages. He intones words I recall from my childhood church visits,

“...through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault...
He raises a chapatti scarred in baking with the sign of the cross. It is comforting and familiar, even if I dislike the dogma.

...hear our prayer...
I think of all the tiny chapels across the world where this ritual takes place. The world is so vast. Instead of chasing to touch it all, perhaps I should just try to find the essence of it in one place, like the tiny space at the heart of the lotus flower in which, they say, lies all the universe: the moons, the stars, everything.
...he broke bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: take, eat...
Maybe I should try to make the most of my life by remaining at the centre, where I am right now, and living well here. Perhaps I don’t need to be always yearning for the open road.

...for ever and ever, Amen.”

Though I am not allowed in the inner sanctuary, I am welcome to visit the small Hindu temples in each village. I leave my shoes at the temple entrance with a shrivelled old lady and enter. The only sound is the pad of my bare feet. The central courtyard, its flagstone floor cool in the shade, is an oasis of calm, a break from the noise and bustle outside. Inside the temple is an elephant. Worshippers put coins in its trunk. In response, the elephant pats them gently on the head, then drops the coin into its master’s hand.

Chipmunks race, tails up,...