Downhill

When we hit the bump that lifted me out of my seat in the back of the bus, I turned to the fellow next to me and asked, “Dindigul?” He nodded. No question about it; that was a Dindigul bump. The town lies between Madurai, a city famous for the Sri Meenakshi Temple, the Gandhi Museum, and an ATM machine that swallowed my credit card and Kodaikanal that I finally pried myself loose from only a couple of miserable hours earlier. Dindigul has a special ill fame. There is a photographer, A.Shaikmomideed, who lives there, who publishes a photo a day in the Hindu. The pictures are of a bridge with no railing, a hole in the sidewalk due to a collapsed sewer below or just an unusually tall pile of rubbish in the street. Some days he points out that the municipality might consider another type of barrier other than a culvert pipe upended as warning to drivers that should you get a wheel down this hole, you’ll get yourself another wheel or perhaps another vehicle. To give the readers a break, the photographer sometimes shows a fellow riding a bicycle with a load of a dozen five gallon water containers. Since the pic is sometime in color and the containers’ colors run round the rainbow, it makes for an attractive picture, but he points out that it would be safer if you could see the man. Then there is the question of how many cows can dance on a pick-up bed. This may or may not be the guy you want living in your town. Dindigul looks like any other town in the flats. It’s dirty and crowded and it has holes in the street and it has a jammed up traffic, both foot and vehicular, the question is so what’s the fuss? I suppose that the Hindu just wants you to remember that this is not the way a public thoroughfare should be maintained. As for causes political corruption is one guess as to the source of the difficulty and the other is that there are too few maintainers for the number of roads. But since I do read the Hindu, you can see why I knew exactly where we were. My difficulty was that even near Death’s door, I really didn’t think, I was supposed to be in Dindigul. That wasn’t the plan. Neither was being near Death’s door.
I’d been planning to leave Kodaikanal for weeks. Each time the Talking Library met, I’d tell anyone who asked, “I’ll be on my way in a week or ten days.” Well it seemed to keep snowing in the Himalayas and hanging lose in Delhi or Calcutta wasn’t high on my list so I waited until time (even for someone who was retired) was running out. India has a rule that all long term visa holders must leave the country every six months. My six month anniversary of my blistering hot ride from the Mumbai airport to the overly warm Victoria Railway Terminal was approaching in early April. Since entering India I had decided on Plan Two, which would be to go look at some of the rest of the world, and early April would be a good time to launch that idea.
I waited until my calling cards arrived and the dhobi wallah had returned my laundry and another trip or two to the ATM machine for travel money then I told “Ma,” the night clerk at the hotel, that it was time to total up the balance of my bill. I gave him his nickname based on the first syllable of his first name, because like all good south Indian names, it is long…like the photographer’s, like the poets. Ma’s wife’s had a baby in these last weeks and he told me that they had narrowed the boy’s name down to four choices. Each name had about the number of letters that one would find in the alphabet. I countered with a suggestion of John, Bill, Fred, or Pete. He didn’t buy. I didn’t think of Al or Art. The length of names may have something to do why more young Indians don’t go to college. How would you like to fill out in triplicate those college forms with a name containing twenty-five or thirty letters?
So I went round telling everybody good by and planned to get out of town before anyone could ask, “You still here?”
I checked in with the travel agent and he told me that the downhill bus would be leaving at 4:30 PM. Ma said he knew of a better schedule, the “Yellow Bus.” By the way when coming to Kodaikanal, I rode the “Pink Bus.” The Pink Bus was further distinguishable by eight foot wide flower (hibiscus?) blossoms painted on the side. The blossoms were so out of scale that I thought stamens might really be giant tuberculosis bacillus. But since both Ma and the travel agent work across the street from the bus stand, I was open to suggestions.
The Cloud Street Café has been closed for a couple of weeks so I went down to the Carlton Hotel and said good bye to the waiters and manager. I missed one waiter called Michael (now that doesn’t take that long to spell although you normally have to be a Christian to have a name that length) but as I left, I met him on the street coming to work.
What I wasn’t planning on was when Ma gave me my wake-up call that morning, he gave me a gift wrapped present. That took me back a little. He and I had been talking about a book he was reading in Tamil and he told me it was about an ancient king of south India. The king’s name might well have had one of those four names he is planning for the kid. The gift was a very romantic statue of a young hero carrying a beautiful heroin away in chariot drawn by a galloping horse. I strongly suspect that these two figure into the story he was reading and both of them and the horse have long names.
The day before I bounced over the Dindigul bump, I’d spent trying to remember how I got my stuff into my pack and brief case and that is when I left one book behind and discovered either that I had become weaker living in Kodaikanal or that I had somehow packed about ten pounds more in my gear. And now I had a breakable statue. Ma is one of those people who will do anything for you. I left him more money than he really thought he’d need with daughter Rachel’s address and asked him if he might mail it on to me. Then after some photographs, we went looking for the “yellow bus.” The idea was that instead of taking the 4:30 to Kodai Road, a town with a train station where the Howdah Express stops, I would take this earlier bus, make a change in a town with a lot of letters in it, and then continue on to Kodai Road. I didn’t have to worry about remembering the town’s name; the conductor knew where to drop me off. Ma wouldn’t allow me to pay for my ticket to the changing point. And so we said our good byes and the bus rolled down the hill road for me continue a journey, which has been halted for four months at a very nice town on a sharp ridge in the forests of Tamil-Nadu.
We spiraled down through the supportive farms for Kodaikanal. All the food that I’d been eating had been grown on these lower slopes. Then the farms became more scattered and the forest rose above the road and threw shade over the bus. While the bus driver slowed on the corners when we met a truck or another bus, he lost points with me by turning on the DVD player and in three monitors we had some Bollywood thriller and with plenty of loud. So down the road we went to the sounds of punches in the face, supposed village dance numbers with full orchestra, and sobs from the women and snickers from the meanies. I sat by the window right over the right rear tire where I could count the bumps in the road but only one of those bumps would lift me out of my seat. All the windows in the bus were open and so there was fresh air and scents from the forest and occasional farm…and the overheating brakes. And then I noted a rare sensation. I was getting a touch of motion sickness.
Bollywood’s volume, which had driven me to the back of the bus to begin with, had been lowered but it seemed to be the trees and vegetation whirling before me out the window that brought on the nausea. The sicker I felt, the less nervous I was about the driving. The driver had gray hair and even though the yellow bus had a hammered out right front “fender,” you don’t age well by getting killed. I decided that the bus was alright although there was the matter of the brakes but I certainly was not alright. The open window, while barred to keep non-paying passengers from climbing in, was a source of fresh air and that was about the best I could hope for.
I think it had been over thirty years since I felt like this. When going to sea, on the first day or two, I could sometime feel rocky. If you are a sailor, you give the condition some thought. The two ways to avoid motion sickness are one, get in motion and stay there before you leave on a trip. I guess life had just been too quiet in Kodaikanal. Two, always travel on a full stomach. Eat before you leave. The people at the Carlton had served up a full breakfast but I needed to be more active than I had been. All I had going for me now was the open window.
We made short stops from time to time to let somebody off. I thought about getting out and puking in someone’s fine village but with two people sitting between and the aisle, I relied on hope. Finally, that wasn’t enough and I got most of my head out between the bars and let fly. There were some ladies sitting in the very back of the bus. I heard their windows slam shut. I was ashamed but this had nothing to do with will. When vomiting out of the right side of an Indian bus, watch forward, you have a little bit of leeway. If you see a truck or another bus coming toward you, pull your head back in. You can work your way between the bars again after the passing takes place, otherwise you may get your name in The Hindu. Well time passed and I wiped my face as best I could. Months before I met a young American woman who referred to toilet paper is “white gold.” It does come in handy for more than its primary purpose.
Of course I felt better but I don’t dwell on thinking about what “feeling worse” might entail. I did keep my face right by that source of fresh air. In time we left the mountains and with straighter roads, we picked up speed but I still didn’t feel well enough to get scared. There was one truck loaded (overloaded) with something which made the profile look like a mushroom. He had come from Dindigul. I wondered if Mr. A. Shaikmohdeen got a picture of him before the truck left town. I braced for a side-swipe; we missed.
The date was March 6th which means that fresh moving air lowers the apparent temperature a few degrees (wind chill factor to my friends) and I noticed that weather that might have passed for winter in south India had hurried north. The more I thought of it, hurrying north was a splendid idea. I’m sure I could acclimatize and Tamil-Nadu and Kerala are two beautiful places to live but I like a little chill. I enjoy wearing a jacket like the one that I was removing.
We passed through several villages and then we entered a small city, one big enough to support a questionable city government and a freelance photographer. When we hit the bump, I was disappointed that I didn’t see Mr. Shaidmohdeem snap a pic of our back wheel in the air. Up ahead lay the bus terminal and another trial to be told at another time.
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