There was a lull for a second, then the bigger of the two brothers appeared in the courtyard, marched up to me, grabbed me by the shirt, pulled me out of my chair, and slammed me against the wall.
‘Are you his dealer, then?’ he shouted. ‘ARE YOU? DID YOU DO THIS TO HIM?’
‘No, man. I’ve never dealt in my life,’ I stammered, suddenly convinced that I was about to be killed.
‘DID YOU SELL THAT SHIT TO HIM? DID YOU?’
‘I d-d-didn’t. I s-swear to God.’
‘I SHOULD FUCKIN’ KILL YOU!’
‘You’ve got the wrong person. I swear on my life. On my mother’s life.’
He let go of me, and snarled.
‘Scum. You fucking scum.’
Then he spat on my shoes, and left.
The hotel receptionist shouted something at him in Hindi, and in response he tossed a few banknotes on to the ground as he disappeared around the corner.
I rearranged my shirt and tried to get my breath back. The entire courtyard was silent, and everyone was staring at me. I tried to chuckle and say that the guy was a loony, but no sound would come out of my mouth.
I then noticed that Liz, Fee and Caz had watched the whole thing from a balcony above. Liz, I could tell, was almost wetting herself with delight, but was straining every facial muscle to keep her pleasure hidden behind the smug, disappointed, told-you-so look that was plastered over her features.
Fee and Caz, judging by appearances, just felt sorry for me.
I had barely recovered from my brush with death when Liz descended from the temple that was Fee and Caz’s room to give me ‘some news’.
‘What? What is it?’ I said, still feeling a little rattled.
‘I’ve made a decision. There’s something I have to do.’
‘What?’
‘Well – Fee and Caz have been telling me about a place, not far from here, that I’d like to visit.’
‘So?’
‘It’s not the kind of place that you can just go and look at, though. If you want to go there, you have to make a commitment to stay at least two weeks.’
‘What! Why?’
‘It’s an ashram.’
‘An ashram? What’s an ashram when it’s at home?’
‘It’s a Hindu place of retreat for meditation, reflection and spiritual furtherance.’
‘
‘Look – I don’t want to go over this ground with you again. You’re obviously impervious to… to what this country is trying to teach you, and I think we should just stick with the facts. I am going to go to the ashram with Fee and Caz.’
‘For two weeks?’
‘For at least two weeks.’
‘Well that’s that, then.’
‘What’s what?’
‘You’ve abandoned me. That’s it. I’m on my own.’
‘No, you’re not. I realize you don’t want to come to the ashram with us, but we can always meet up…’
‘Too sodding right I’m not coming to an ashram. I don’t want to get brainwashed by some bunch of Hare Krishna loony mental headcases. No way. I’m not going anywhere near…’
‘Stop. STOP! I don’t want to hear this. Your prejudices are…’
‘PREJUDICES! I’m not prejudiced – I just don’t want to end up running around Leicester Square with a shaved head telling everyone I love them.’
‘That, Dave, is called prejudice, in case you didn’t know what the word means. We’re talking about a whole religion here, followed by hundreds of millions of people, and all you can think of is some… some… typically twisted Western manifestation of an Eastern philosophy. You are
‘Because you persuaded me to.’
‘Don’t give me that. You wanted to come.’
‘Only so I could be with you. And now you’re deserting me.’
‘I’m following a calling. You’re welcome to join me, or to meet me afterwards, but I am not going to sacrifice this opportunity just for the sake of your petty-mindedness.’
‘And I’m not just going to hang around waiting for you. We’ve got an itinerary to keep up with. There’s a whole country out there that I came here to see. I can’t just waste all my time here, can I? I’d go mad. There’s no point in coming to India and not seeing anything. I’ve got to get moving. I have to get to Goa.’
‘Impatience is a typically Western state of mind. You don’t realize it, but you’ve become a self-parody.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You… you… you’ve just become an arsehole. That’s the only way of putting it. And you haven’t even got enough personality to become a self-parody. You’ve become a parody of someone else. Despite the fact that Fiona is one of the biggest bullshitters ever to walk this earth, you have decided to try and turn yourself into her! It’s pathetic’
‘If you had said that to me a week ago, I would have got angry. Fortunately for you, in the last few days I have made significant progress, and have come to know myself well enough for a pathetic little shit like you to be unable to get to me. My real self is simply impervious to the likes of you. Whatever you say, you simply can’t offend me, you… you slimy little PIECE OF SHIT! YOU TURD! YOU FEEBLE MOANING CYNICAL PATHETIC PSEUDO-LAD PISS-HOLE FAKE! I HATE YOU AND I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE! YOU MAKE ME SICK!’
And so it was that I ended up on my own. Ranj had been kidnapped by his family, Liz had become a Hare Krishna, and Jeremy was just a lost cause as a human being. Other than them, there was no one I knew in the entire country.
By this stage I was bored of Pushkar. After the argument with Liz I felt that I ought to get moving in order to give the impression that I wasn’t frightened of being alone, but the fact was, even the
I did not want to be on my own. I just didn’t. There was only one thing in the world that would have been worse than being alone, and that was being with Jeremy.
Pushkar was such a small place that it didn’t even have a railway station. The nearest one was a few hours away by bus, in Ajmer. As I walked alone to the Pushkar bus station to buy myself a ticket to Ajmer, I felt like one of those old men who amble around in parks feeding ducks, eating sandwiches out of a paper bag and trying to talk to strangers. This was bleak. Nineteen years old, and I already felt like a lonely pensioner.
I couldn’t recall ever having felt lonely before. It was a weird sensation – for the moment a bit exciting, but I could tell that once I got used to it, it would be awful.
Our plan had been to stop in Udaipur, Ahmedabad and Bombay before we got to Goa, but I decided to ditch the original itinerary and head straight there. This meant that I would be going half-way down the entire country in one go, but I couldn’t face stopping in places where I might end up in some hotel on my own, without any other travellers. I mean, there’d be
