Читать книгу India Vik - Liz Gallois - Страница 8

I met Louise at the end of my stay. I saw her in the front hall of the YWCA (where they accept men), reading after dinner that was all over by seven. And true, there’s not much to do in Chennai for women of her age at night, nor for me, having no cash at this stage—well some, I was hanging on like grim death to my taxi fare to the airport.

I saw her look up from her book and over at me. She took in my greasy blonde pony tail, and I’m very thin at present, I mean I’m never fat, so maybe I’m thinner, what with having not much to spend on food. I thought, she’s thinking I’m one of those Westerners who get sick through drinking the water. These are the ones who believe when they drink the water and get sick, it’s only through bad luck. So they get sick again. And again. They don’t learn. Actually I’m not like that, as Louise learnt when we got to talk. Some of these drink-the-water idiots end up at the Apollo Hospital.

Like Sherry. But she got sick in another way. I thought Sherry looked a bit stressed and quiet, but girls can be like that. Then we took off to Pondi for the weekend, and that’s when it happened. Panic attack, anxiety, depression, psychosis, I don’t know what, but she’s at the Apollo now, waiting for her insurance to repatriate her. It’s not happening fast. ‘Do you know,’ I said to Louise, ‘they’re sending a doctor from the UK to accompany her home.’ Poor Sherry, she’ll never get insurance to travel again. This is a disaster. The doctors here think it’s the antimalarials that set her off, but boy, hard to prove.

I spared Louise the gory details, but I’m troubled—God that’s an understatement. In Pondi it was impossible to get a bottom-end hotel because of the Mother’s birthday. Mother’s the Frenchwoman who married the Ashram Guru, forget his name. Became a Guru herself. I read that in the guide. As I said it was the Mother’s birthday, by the way she died in ‘73, only thirty years ago. No room at the inn, every hotel—most are owned by the Ashram—was booked out. We endured an expensive night in a kind of tenth class Hilton, room with aircon, then cruised around on foot for a cheaper place the next morning. We de-niched an Indian hotel, family and commercial traveller kind of place, with a vast dining room. Good, actually, although the bathroom wasn’t clean, but then neither was the Hilton’s. So there was Jack, sorry I forgot to mention him, who’s African but is mostly taken for Indian and Sherry and me. We shared the room.

We rocked up at the Ashram after we’d settled in. I’m not at all spiritual, but Sherry was keen. Jack is easygoing. He said, ‘It’s central business here, we better check it out.’

The Mother’s tomb, all decked out with flowers under the frangipani tree. With What’s his name who set it all up. The Ashram was crowded, we had to form a crocodile line to file past. Maybe that’s when Sherry started to lose it. She was bawling that the Mother was dead. ‘I miss her, I need her now,’ she sobbed. Jack held Sherry till she stopped crying. She looked all right after that, we walked around the streets getting an eye full of the ruination of French architecture, more stunning as a ruin than pristine—that is, for me. Others like things neat and restored. We ate dinner with the locals at Le Café on the shore front, with the waves crashing.

Back to our hotel. About 11pm. That was when Sherry stretched a piece of clothes line across the room from the window, fastening it to a hook behind the door (maybe she always travels with a clothes line) and started to wash all her clothes in the basin, and hang them dripping on this line. I thought, Gee she’s weird.

I must tell you about Sherry before the event. I didn’t tell Louise all this. Sherry was on her first overseas trip by herself. She is very slim, very fair in hair and all, you know, blue eyes. She told me her childhood was very happy. ‘Mummy and Daddy were always there for me.’ Sherry was very open in her opinions and about her life, things I really like in a friend. She wasn’t into reading women’s fashion magazines, or cooking, or other girlie things, you know what I mean, like wearing girlie clothes. But no one could be more feminine than Sherry. I kept falling in love with her, then making myself fall out of love, telling myself, ‘You’ve only got six weeks and the dissertation to write. You can’t be in love, you’ve got to work.’ Now I feel bad, I was a bit on again, off again with Sherry. Maybe that contributed to her losing it.

The washing was only the beginning. In the morning she wouldn’t come out with us for breakfast, she said she had to clean the bathroom. I don’t think she’d slept at all. I was conscious all night of movements, like she was packing and unpacking her backpack. Whatever.

It’s easy to obsess about dirt in India, but this was too much—she cleaned from the minute we woke up. The bathroom, then the floor of the room. Jack and I went back and back to persuade her to get some food, and then we realised that she was doing the walls, and didn’t look like she would stop for anything. It was getting late on Sunday, the desk clerk downstairs didn’t speak much English and wasn’t helpful, but eventually an older supervisor-type bloke helped us with the number of a doctor who could speak English. This supervisor had a contact at the Ashram and got an English speaking doctor’s number that way. The doctor when he came was good. He gave Sherry a shot to calm her down, she didn’t object but maybe she didn’t realise what was happening. He said she’d probably be OK with that, but advised us to head back to Chennai. He told us to take her to the Apollo if things got worse. They did.

So we packed up—her backpack was heavy with all her wet clothes—got all of us on the bus, but I didn’t understand what was happening. She wouldn’t sit with me, she wouldn’t look at me, if I got near her she didn’t exactly scream, but she said to Jack, ‘He’s going to hurt me, he might kill me, keep him away.’ Well, I didn’t need to be told twice. You know, it was so over the top, after the first shock I just said, poor Sherry. I mean, if she hadn’t been so extreme, I might have thought it was something I’d done.

So I had all this on my mind when I was talking to Louise. I told her all about my research. She was rapt. ‘It’s great, what a wonderful project,’ she said. The grant I got was to report on waste management and recycling in Chennai.

I told her about the rag pickers at the tip who can sort so fast, just by the feel through their fingers, making up individual lots of the different strengths of plastic. They squat in their saris and sort for hours, then they’re off home, to cook dinner I expect. There’s a lot of plastic that can’t be recycled because it’s too thin already. Now this super-thin plastic has been banned in Chennai, that is officially, but it’s actually these very fine bags that are used for take away food—you know, those people you see carrying a plastic bag of runny dhal, and rice in another. The street vendors favour the banned bags because they’re cheap, and if they use heavier plastics that can be recycled, their overheads go up, and worse, their customers can’t afford to buy the food they’re selling. Anyway the ban is just about impossible to enforce.

When I told Louise this story and others similar she said, ‘What you’ve done is great, you learnt more about India in six weeks than tourists ever learn. You know the real India.’

I told her how the very thin plastic, and all the other plastics get into the waterways, fish can do real damage to themselves, especially if it’s that super-thin banned type.

I told her about visiting a school, and asking the kids what they did to re-use old stuff. I couldn’t shut them up. Hands went up all over the classroom. Everything was being recycled. They showed me their chappals made from car tyres, drinking ‘glasses’ made from food tins, paper bags for sweets made from newspaper. They told me about their homemade clothes made from other clothes collected from unusual places like the tip. They went on and on, and it was slow, it all had to be interpreted for me. Seriously proud, those kids.

I can’t include this in my dissertation, because that’s about Chennai, but the Pondi Ashram has a big paper making factory where they make the paper from rags. Neat.

I got around to telling Louise about my trouble with writing. She said she used to be a teacher. I said I only had two months on my return to Oxford to write up all that I’d researched. I told her I was packing death. I told her I read masses, everything I can lay my hands on, it’s a breeze, it’s just I never learnt to write. It’s the dyslexia I had—I’m over that now, but I never got those writing skills. She said if I was reading that much, that was all I needed, I’d be able to write. When I looked doubtful, she said she’d proof read my work. We exchanged email addresses. None of my friends know grammar, I told her. She’s kind of sweet, is Louise. She looked so delighted at the idea of reading my dissertation.

We used to go down the road towards the station to her favourite Indian restaurant—non-veg—and we’d eat and she’d insist on footing the bill. Not that often, mind you, I was just two days from my flight. What a godsend to an empty purse on an empty stomach.

We said our goodbyes. She was off to Hampi for a few days.

You wouldn’t read about it, but you’re going to have to. I missed my plane. Those sleepy boys on the desk didn’t give me my 4am wake up, I was meant to be leaving with this girl, share a taxi. She left without me. So there I was, stuck, not knowing when I’d get another flight home. Still, this way I could keep on visiting Sherry every day, still waiting for the doctor who would accompany her home. Sherry had got over believing I would hurt her. I don’t think she even remembered having that fear. She seemed better but looked zonked with the medication they were feeding her. She said she still liked India except that Indian men never left her a moment’s peace. Endlessly getting real close to her, often talking dirty, not taking no for an answer. She said she was only safe with me and Jack. She said it was her fault for being blonde. She said all this in a kind of flat, emotionless way, not like Sherry when she was well. It was like talking to half of her. Calm but, not crying or anything like she was all the way back from Pondi, saying she wanted the Mother. I spose she really meant her own Mum as, by her own admission, Sherry was something of a homebody.

So when Louise turned up again after Hampi, there I was. We resumed our walks to her restaurant as before, otherwise I would have starved. She sort of caught on to that. I had to move out of the Y where we were both staying originally, because I had no money to pay—the grant had covered six weeks accom there but not a day more. I was sleeping in Jack’s little office at the Theosophical Society where he’s doing his research. People are generous. The Y kept my backpack in the luggage room. I kept on using their bathroom too and they turned a blind eye, so whenever I saw Louise I always had wet hair and smelt of soap, although my clothes needed a wash. I was hoping Sherry wouldn’t get upset by my dirty clothes and want to start washing again, but she was over that.

Louise and I talked a bit about Sherry. I reckon, if it wasn’t the antimalarials, it was the harassment from the men. Louise and I said goodbye again.

I’m back home. It’s bloody freezing. Sherry’s home with her family up north but I can’t visit, not just yet. There’s the email. My dissertation’s growing on the computer. I shouldn’t be writing this. But you know what Louise told me seems true, here I am writing this and the dissertation is coming along. I’ve shown some chapters to my supervisor, who says it’s fine. Louise was right. And anyway I know the dyslexia clears. It’s a miracle.

I got an email from Louise. ‘Send me your chapters as you do them. I’ll suggest changes if any are needed. Probably won’t be any. But I’d love to read it. Such great research!’ As enthusiastic as ever. I haven’t replied. All that India stuff is getting more remote by the minute.

I remember Louise’s recycling story, the earthenware throw-away cups she says tea is served in up north in the trains. The local potter spins them on his wheel, the chai is served in them, then they’re smashed on the station platform, back to the earth.