Looking back on it from his recovery bed, it all seemed like a dream . A wonderful beginning to a lve story yet where would it go? After 35 years of ups and downs, Frank had learned not to expect too much from life. Not that he was depressed about life, he just expected nothing and thus was always amazed when things turned out well. He was amazed that his family was all in good health. He was amazed that his plan to work hard for 5 years and then travel on a long trip around the world had worked out. Sometimes things worked out too well. As they say ,"Be careful what you wish for, it may come true."
After 9 full months of travelling, his passport sporting only a few blank spots, Frank was fed up. Tired of seeing temples and churches and forts and museums. Tired of trains and buses and starting. Starting over. It seemed to be a theme in his life. How many times had he started over. Changed careers, relationships, apartments. Travelling alone was all about starting over. You go to a new country where everything is strange. Gradually you learn a few words, you learn what to eat, you make some friends, and then you leave and start over somewhere else.
His goal had always been India. India, the spiritual nation. The country that beckonned so many of Frank's contemporaries. The spirtual mother of the psychodelic generaltion. Those products of a materialistic post-industrial societywhose minds had been blown apart with LSD and sent drifting. Blown past the work ethic, past materialism, into what, where? There were no answers once the drugs wore off, only memories of states of mind that were better.
The Indians did it without drugs. There was yoga, Maharishi Yogi, fakirs, kundalini, seers sitting on mountaintops and bathing in ice water, men sleeping on beds of nails , walking on fire, snake charmers. The stories went on and on. India was filled with spirituallity like America was filled with fast food and cars. It called to those who were tantalized by the mind expansion of halucinagenics but left in the end with nothing. No nirvana and no American dream. Drifting between the spiritual and materialistic worlds. Rejecting American values they were in turn looked on as freaks or perhaps meal tickets by poor Indians who would have given anything for just a fraction of the security ofg the American dream.
This leads us to explore another draw of India, guilt. All our lives we had heard, "eat your vegetables. People in India are starving." After years of this a person starts to feel bad every time he thinks about the state of the world. Every time you eat you imagine thousands of emaciated bodies begging for that last french fry covered with catsup. Any good person would want to do something about it. But what could you do about it? Guilt is a slow gnawing cancerous pain. Part of going to India was about seeing what it was really like and if there was anything to be done about it.
He had heard that traveling in India was difficullt, overwhelming for some, so the first months he travelled in easy places like France and Scandanavia. Then he worked up to Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Egypt. Finally after 6 months of warmup travel he was boarding the plane in Cairo for Bombay. He felt like a person about to step off a high cliff and jump into an icy lake below. He was scared. You just had to command your body, which didn't want to go, which enjoyed warmth , security and comfort, to "go". There was nowhere else to go . For so long he'd tol himself that he couldn't start a career, get married, or anything else until he had been to India because once you did those things you wouldn't have the freedom to travel. So now sitting on the plane on its way to Cairo he was scarred and excited. Scared because he didn't know what would happen in India. Excited because he was finally getting on with his life. Scared because beyond the goal of travelling to India there was nothing, no plans for what to do when he finished his trip. Excited because he was ....going to India. Finally he arrived.
From the moment he got off the plane things were difficult. The long bus ride from the Bombay International Airport to the Colamba District where the budget travelers stayed, passed by thousands upppon thousands of people living in shacks, tentss, filth , sewers. The poverty hit him like the heat from a blast furnace, sickening him. The bus finally dropped him off and hour and a half later, car sick and slightly in shock amidst a jostling crowd of people and cas; more than he had ever seen at one time. Also people were driving on the wrong side of the street. Every time he crossed the street he risked his life. He had to keep telling himself ,"Look right".
Body language was different. People were staring bold facedly. A shake of the head from side to side could mean yes or no. The gesture that he knew for "go away" meant "come here" in India. Beggars were everywhere. When they saw a westerner they would turn on all their persuasive powers and they could be very insistant. Of course you could give some money to some of them, and he did, but there were scores of them. It was all too much for Frank those first few days. He would go back to his hotel room and lock the door and tell himself," Its ok . Just ease into it. Relax . You'll get used to it."
But he never did really adjust to it. Not to the noise and the dirt and the poverty. Not that there weren't many wonderful moments and interactions. There were. If you had asked Frank later he would have said he wouldn't have missed it for anything. But more and more he began to realize that he didn't like being a tumble weed and that 9 months of travel had finally exhausted him. He found himself closing down. He started to ignore the people on the streets. He didn't want to see their curious stares, hear the salesman's pitches, see the mocking gleeful looks. Those looks, he just could not understand them. Why were they looking pointing, shouting, laughing when they saw him go by? He learned that if he ignored them then their looks had no effect. So he started to block them out.
Frank by this time also had started to ignore the other tourists. He'd initially thought he might find a nice woman to travel with. He soon saw the futility of this. The attractive woman were all travelling with their boyfriends. After many months of trying he resigned himself to being womanless. Why go to all the trouble of getting emotionally involved with someone for a few days anyway? The ups and particularly the downs weren't worth it.
After 2 1/2 months in India Frank decided to go to Madras to visit a musician friend he had met. There was a chance that he could join an Indian rock band there. He no longer felt like he was a tourist. He wasn't interested in seeing sights anymore. He had accomplished his travel goals. What he wanted now were some roots, a life. But where? He was reluctant to go home because there was nothing waiting for him there.
This is the state of mind that Frank was in when he first met Eva. Not exactly what you would call positive. It was like someone awakening from an unpleasant dream who had not figured out where he was yet , if he had been dreaming, or if he was awake.
At the hotel, suffering from his 23 attack of diarriaha in 2 1/2 months, Frank carefully and quickly walked to the bathroom. It was a split bathroom with the sink outside and the toilet inside. Eva was brushing her teeth at the sink. When he asked her if he could get by to use the toilet their eyes met for the first time. Frank's body was contorted due to a particularly strong contraction. Eva mumbled like a tongueless person with rabies. Then she spit and said, "No I'm not using it. Go ahead". He thanked her and went inside.
When he came out she was still there. They talked a bit. Frank was not expecting anything. She was beautiful. He knew her boyfriend would appear any minute. Nonetheless he enjoyed talking to her.
"Have you had breakfast?" he was surprised to hear himself ask. He was surprised when she agreed to go with him. He expected nothing from her. But as they walked to the restaurant together he felt himself relax. He watched her. She was looking at people, at the beggars, the children shitting in the street, at the salesmen hawking their wares. She was taking it all in. And she was smiling. Frank, who had long ago shut it all out, found himself influenced. He could not look at India directly. It was like looking at the sun, but reflected in her face he found he could absorb it. It was as if she created a space, a distance, a vantage point in his mind from where they could see it all safely. He would see her see something, he would look at it and feel what she felt. All this without speaking a word. Then they passed some teenagers who laughed and called out something in their language in a jeering manner. Frank shrank back. She smiled.
"I don't understand why they do that", he whined. "It drives me crazy".
And then she said one word that changed his entire perspective. It was like a key fitting into a lock.
"Childish", she smiled.
That was it, childish. The locals were not mean, angry,hostile, mocking. Just childish. This problem of dealing with the people on the street was suddenly put in a new light. The description solved the problem. The people in Madras were childish, nothing to get upset about really. Rather funny if you thought about it. How do you treat children? You humor them or you play with them, or you scold them, but you don't let them get to you. It was as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders.
They had a nice breakfast together. Eva probally wondered about him though because every now and then he would tilt his head as if deep in thought and mutter,"childish. Yeah they're childish." to himself.
When he asked her about her future plans it wasn't because he thought something might develop. That wasn't until much later. He just found that talking to her was rather theraputic. When she said she was going to Mamallapuram he heard himself asking if he could meet her there. Mamallapuram was a small village about 60 miles south of Madras that was famous for its sculpturers and for some ancient temples on the beach.
She surprisingly agreed. Frank was wary though. So many times people would say one thing and then did another. She was probably being polite. What else could she say? No I don't want to meet you?
But Frank thought that he would go there anyway. He had wanted to see the village and now was as good a time as any. They agreed to meet there the following day at 8 pm at the bus station.
Thirty six hours later Frank was looking at his watch for the 10th time
"Ok. I'll wait three more minutes, until 8:30, and then I'm out of here." He wasn't disappointed, he expected it. People were undependable. It was ok.
"Bitch ", he muttered to himself as he walked out of the station. He was going to reward himself with a nice fish dinner.
He entered one of the restaurants he read the menu . It looked good. He went in to sit down. There sitting at a table with three other women was Eva. She gave a wave and a smile and halfheartedly asked him if he would like to join them. He did.
"Hi , I'm Frank."
"Hi. I'm Hilke. I'm June. I'm Telka.Nice to meet you. Where are you from? You? USA. Australia. Austria, Germany, Nice to meet you . Nice to meet you. Travelling long. blah blah.blah.blah.blah,blah,blah.
Have the four of you been traveling together?"
"No we just met 30 minutes ago" Silence.
Frank's eyes snuck over to Eva's. She seemed oblivious to his existence. It was like these women that she met 30 minutes ago were her lifelong friends and Frank was a stranger. He felt slighted and rallied some courage to be assertive.
"I thought you were going to meet me at the station at 8"
"Well ,"she said in an offhand way "I got in at 7:45 and you weren't there so I left." She nods at Telke who affirms the truth of her story.
"That does me a lot of good, you bastard," he thought" since we were suppossed to meet at 8."
But he said nothing. What for. He didn't know her. She obviously didn't want to know him. The desserts for the women's dinners came, but the fish dinner never did. They ran out. The 4 of them wandered off to another restaurant in search of food for Frank. They spent a pleasant evening together. As they parted they made loose plans to meet the following day at the beach.
Frank had breakfast alone at a nice relaxed restaurant. The food was good and they were playing classic Beatles' tunes. He ate and listened closely to the music he hadn't heard in so long. "Let It Be", While my Guitar Gently Weeps, Bungalow Bill. When "Hey Jude " came on it made him thoughtful.
"Hey Jude. Don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her under your skin. Then you can begin to make it better." It brought back his teenage years when he first started liking girls and yet felt too awkward and afraid to go out with girls. How different things might have been for him if he had taken Paul McArtney's fatherly advice back then when the song first came out.
"Hey Jude, don't be afraid. You were made to go out and get here. Remember to let her under your skin. Then you can begin to make it better."
"Yes", he thought. A man's purpose is to go and get a woman: to have a woman to love and to be loved by". Then suddenly he thought of Eva. She was beautiful, intelligent, and sensitive. He had never considered the possibility of romance with her. He was so used to being turned down by beautiful woman that he immediately put that possibility out of his mind. Under the influence of Paul McCartney and friends singing "La la la la la la la,la la la la, Hey Jude, Frank recognized that there could be a chance of romance with her. Then the debate started.
"Why get involved with someone for just 3 days. After all you have a train ticket leaving from Madras to Delhi in three days".
"If you really liked her you could delay the trip 6 days."
"But then you would forfeir 196 rupees ( about $12)."
"Yeah that's right forget it".
La la la la la la la
"Wait a minute. If it was really worthwhile it would be worth even 296 rupees."
"That's right. But even so. A week 10 days isn't long enough to get to know someone. "
"If its really worthwhile you could make it last longer. Maybe forever."
Gradually sifting through the arguments he concluded that there was about a 1 in 3,000,000 chance
of having sufficient reasons to let her into his heart.
So he did.
Just a little. He still didn't expect anything to come of it, but for the first time he admitted to himself that this was a woman he could love.It can be such a small thing, an attitude shift. Even a change from "I do not consider her" to " I consider her but it's not really possible", even a change this small can as history has showed us many times, move mountains.
The friendly waiter told Frank about their lives in this small coastal fishing village. Tonight they said was a festival night. A night when the town wouldn't sleep. It was Krishna's birthday. Krishna the mischievious Hindu incarnation of the Supreme being would be spreading his joyousnous throughout the village tonight. They also told Frank about a good lobster dinner that they would be serving at the restaurant that night.
After breakfast, Frank got his beach gear together and walked down the beach in the direction that his friends had told him they would be. Finally he saw the 4 women, surrounded by a group of lecherous looking Indians who were seeking to sell them jewelery and carvings and perhaps get a glimpse of erotic flesh that foreign woman so freely displayed.
He plopped down for a relaxed day of reading, napping, bodysurfing, and chatting. He mentioned the lobster dinner to the 2 German woman, Eva and Telke. Neither of them had ever tried it. Arrangements are made to meet at 8 at the restaurant. Frank found himself talking more and more to Eva. Although she was friendly there was a part of her that seemed cool and distant. Telke on the other hand was warmer towards him but seemed a bit disturbed in her life. The hours flew by and before they knew it the light was starting to fail. The woman said goodbye and left Frank alone. This was perfect because it gave Frank a chance to photograph something ge gad seen the dat before at dusk. He had envissioned a beautiful picture, but he hadn't had his camera with him. It was the Indian ferris wheel.
What's the differnce between a Western ferris wheel and an Indian ferris wheel?
A motor. The Indian ferris wheel like the Indian bull dozer (an elephant) has no motor. The wheel is powered by human power. It is shapped like a giant reel of film. Staggered around the outside are the giant swinging seats, each carrying 4 people. In the center at the hub, at the center of the radiating beams stand 3 teenag boys. It is their job to step on the crossbars that form a slightly larger circle than the one at the hub. Their stepping motion makes the delicately balanced wheel move. For it to work, the wheel must be very nearly perfectly balanced . The initial inertia causes the wheel to move ever so slightly in the beginning. As it gets going faster and faster, the boys must step faster and faster until they begin to look like hamsters in a cage.To stop, the boys one at a time reach up and grab one of the carts and ride it to the ground. When all three boys descend in this manner friction stops the wheel in about 10 seconds.
Just after sunset the day before, Frank had seen the workers set it up. At dusk, the wheel, the carts, the bodies all silouhettes against a red sky inspired him. On this night he captured the scene on film. He felt the joy and excitement one feels when you create something that you like.
Later that night Frank arrived first at the restaurant. He had taken particular care to look nice that evening. He had shaved,combed his hair, and put on his nicest clothes. For someone who had been on the road for 1 year, he looked presentable. Finally Eva and Telke came. The others weren't coming. Eva had also dressed up. They looked out of place among the other budget travelers, who looked like they were going to the beach after dinner. Frank and Eva looked like they were going to the prom.
They ordered 3 lobster dinners and sat back to enjoty the good food and music.They talked of the upcoming festival. Telke informed everyone that the next night there would be a rare total lunar eclipse. It was Frank's experience that strange things often happened under the influence of a full moon.
About 3/4 of the way through the meal a German man walked into the restaurant. Upon seeing the lobsters at the table he unabashadly walked over and asked how they were.
"Great", the 2 German women answered in German. And before they had finished their description of the unusual delicacy he had, uninvited, taken a seat in the informal manner of an old friend. Ther threesome had suddenly enlarged to a foursome. The new German lost now time in showing particular attention to Eva, gleaming at her with hungry eyes. Although all of the Germans could speak English quite well, they spoke in German. Frank was suddenly the odd man out. He looked at his plate and felt uncomfortable, tried to listen to the music, and thought murderous thoughts about the German man.
"I knew it wouldn't work out" , Frank thought to himself. He started planning what he would do alone after dinner. If the German man went off with Eva, which was seeming more and more likely by the minute, or if he invited the 2 German woman to accompany him to the festival , Frank would say he felt like being alone rather than being the outsider all evening.
Then something amazing and totally unexpected happened. Telke and the German man announced abruptly that they were both tired and were leaving together. The got up, paid their bill, and exchanging excited glances, were gone in a flash. How or when this romance occurred or when the communication took place was a mystery to Frank. When the German man, who was obviously interested in Eva, had a chance to "get" her, he suddenly left with a much less charming and much less attractive woman.
Suddenly as if by divine intervention, Frank was alone with beautiful, intelligent, and charming Eva. Alone in a romantic beach village studded with Hindu beach temples on a festival night celebrating Krishna's birth!
They lingered over dinner. They talked. I turned out that they had a lot in common. They liked similar music (they had even brought along some of the same cassettes), they both were interested in living communally, both of course liked travelling, and both liked sports and exercise. Eva had a keen interest in science and especially astronomy. He loved to hear her talk about it. It was fun to watch her get so excited about black holes, Nebulas, and Neutron stars. If he didn't understand something, she would back up and patiently explain it. Soon he too was getting excited. He told her about his interest in photography. How you sometimes saw the chance for a great photograph and how you had to plan it out, set your time, like an assasin.
"Like the photograph I took yesterday of the ferris wheel at dusk."
"The what", she asked.
"The Indian ferris wheel. Didn't you see it yesterday?"
When she shook her head no, he asked her if she would like to walk around the festival together and he would show her the ferris wheel. She agreed.
It was 11 o'clock when they emerged form the restaurant. The almost full moon was already high in the sky. The air was warm , sultry, and humid with just a slight sea breeze to cool you off. The streets were packed with pushcarts selling everything you could imagine and many you couldn't. Strange fruit, exotic toys, balloons filled with colored sand, radios,clothes. There was even an alley where they were auctioning off bunches of bananas. Many people were drunk, stoned, opiated, or just plain infected by the energy of the evening. There was electricity in the air. There were snake charmers, astrologers who used a trained parrot to randomly pick a fortune card which they would interpret, and street drummers playing for dancers whirling in hypnotic trances.
` Frank and Eva walked over to a huge throng of people seated on the ground. They were watching a puppet show. Inside a large carriage , cut out on 1 side, the puppets which were held up with sticks from below, acted out their dramas. You didn't have to speak Tamil, the local language to figure out what was going on. The puppets were contiuously dancing, fighting, running, and bopping each other on the head.
It was fun to watch the people, young and old alike, who absorbed with a passion that was striking. After about 15 minutes of this, Frank and Eva got up and walked past the countless stalls, each burning incense, towards the ferris wheel.
As they approached the ferris wheel the saw that there was a large crowd around it. They got up as close as they could. It was completely full except for the bottom basket. Frank explained how it worked and why it was necessary for the basket to be balanced for it to work. Thirty, sixty, ninety seconds they waited and still it didn't move. Fianally they asked why the wheel wasn't going.
"They are waiting for 2 more people, but no one wants to get on" , a helpful stranger answered.
"Is it safe", Eva asked.
The man smiled mischieviously, "Usually".
Frank and Eva looked at one another , smiled, and shouted out simultaneously ,"We'll do it".
The mass of people parted and there before them was a pat leading directly to the basket. Inside it were two small boys. As they walked through the crowd , doing something together that neither would have done alone, they looked up at the massive creaking contraption and hesitated. But everyone was watching them, cheering them on. They sat down. And then it was too late. The large boys climbed to the center of the wheel and took their first step. The wheel moaned and nudged forward. Just at that moment, one of the two boys who shared the basket stood up and vaulted over the edge,apparently having thoughts about the safety of this endeavor.
Slowly, slowly then faster and faster still, then wait this is too fast. From the ground it didn't seem like it was moving fast, but on board it felt like they were ripping around. The wheel vibrated back and forth like some terrible six headed monster. Frank felt his stomach fly out from the cart, past the crowds, past the beach, towards some black hole out there. The remaining little boy appeared to be in an advanced state of shock. Even in the moonlight his color seemed unnatural. He hung his head out the side of the cart, refusing to take his eyes off the ground. Perhaps he was looking for the rat of a friend who had deserted him . Maybe he was planning what he would do to him the next time he saw him. Perhaps he was too scared to think. Frank and Eva were slightly less scared. They were also excited, laughing, and slightly sick. In the excitement of the motion, sitting opposite one another, their hands joined. It wasn't a passionate carress, not aprobing first embrace, but rather a natural instictive seach for security in the face of a possible danger.
"This can't go on much longer," Frank thought. "The boys will get tired soon.". But on and on it went for what seemed like forever. The little boy was gripping the side of the basket so hard that he was in danger of losing circulation in his hands. Finally one of the boys in the center reached up and grabbed a cart to ride down. The second and third followed. The wheel started to slow down.
Round and round she goes , where she stops, nobody knows. Chick chick chick goes the chuck a luck carnival wheel. Creak creak creak goes the Indian Ferris wheel around. The people in each basket wondering where they will end up. The top being the best or worst, depending on your faith in Indian technology and in reincarnation.The winners ( or losers) are .....Frank , Eva , and a poor little boty who looks like his world is falling apart. The three of them are left dangling at the top, high above the crowds, the noise, the lights, the curious stares of the Indian people. They are in their own private world . A world frozen momentarily by time and fate. Frank and Eva look at one another and smile and then laugh out loud.
Frank, , made brave by the words of Paul McCartney, the luck of the night, the festive spirit of the crowd, the moon, their location at the top of the ferris wheel, and most of all by the beauty and grace of the woman sitting opposite him, slowly changed his hand position from that of a grip to a carress. He held his breath waiting for her reaction. If she had pulled her hand away, perhaps he would have jumped out of the basket into the crowd far below. But she didn't pull her hand away . She smiled. Her eyes lit up and blazed with excitement. He knew then for the first time that she liked him as much as he liked her but had like him, given no sign of it. She returned his carress. They sat like that. Happily carressing hands. Swaying at the top of the wheel looking into each other's eyes for the first time for an eternity .
Let the narration pause here, with Frank and Eva happily suspended high above the Earth, so that a certain difference in culture can be explained. ( Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could stretch the golden moments of our lives so easily. I have often wished it so, but alas, it is soley within the imagination that we can do this.) In India there is a social taboo against the expression of sexuality. It is common to see 2 men walking arm in arm down the street. Or you may see 2 woman walking hand in hand, fingers intertwined, arms swinging. You will rarely if ever see a man and a woman walking this way. For a foreigner to do this is disrespecful and will be met with disapproving stares. Not that they weren't staring already, the constant attention was a fact of life for a foreigner in India. However there is a big difference between a curious stare and a disapproving stare.
After a long time of looking and caressing, Frank wondered whyt they weren't moving yet. He looked down at the cart on the bottom. It had only 2 people in it. They laughed as they realized at the same moment what was happening.They were in the same situation now as they had been a few minutes ago. They were stuck on top until 2 more brave souls appeared. They looked deeply into one another's eyes, then thought a second thought simultaneously. They looked at the boy. His eyes were still glued to the ground.
Nobody could see them up there. It was dark, no lights, no crowd. In the entire town of 30,000 people there was no place to be alone. Not a street, not a restaurant, not a temple, not the even the beach was free from the hundreds of people roaming around and staring at you childishly. There was no place for a man and a woman to be alone in public in the entire village except the one they had accidentally stumbled upon.
They thought another thought together. This one was not so much a thought as it was a force. A mysterious force that made the distance between them less and less until their lips met in a warm and gentle first kiss. Wheels spun but the basket did not. Power surged but there was no movement except for the gentle rocking of the basket and the warm breeze. They looked around smiling. There was time for a second kiss , and a third , and a fourth. Each growing in passion and depth as they became acquainted with one another, tested, and learned to trust.
Too soon, they felt a gentle rocking motion and the wheel started up again. It was someone else's turn to be stuck on top. They went around a few more times. Then the wheel was stopped at their basket. It was their turn to get out. Only then did he let go of her hands.
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