Stay awake

our visit was short, and i couldn't help but feel as though we were knocking on peoples' doors then running away before they could catch us - playing with fire, skipping from city to city and miraculously escaping unscathed. i think the closest we came to true and genuine danger was in agra, home of the taj mahal and not much else. we did the tourist thing; spent a while at the taj in the heat and the humidity and wore those freaky shoe covers that you have to wear on the marble so you don't wreck it. my memory of how the taj mahal actually looks against the sky and the landscape gets all mixed up with the postcards and photos that i've seen in books - funnily enough the thing that i can remember most clearly is the people along the laneway back to our hotel, who were all trying desperately to sell us slightly different forms of the same souvenir crap. sad tired eyes.

we went out to dinner at one of the million restaurants claiming to have a view of the taj from their rooftop (this one didn't) and, exhausted, dragged ourselves back to the hotel. i remember lying in bed next to lewis, staring blankly at the ceiling fan which didn't work, with my head spinning and my limbs sinking. slow motion. i remember turning my head to lewis taking ten minutes and his little heart seemed to pound so hard i could feel it and i said i was scared and i ran next door to get the other boys and made them lie in bed next to each other and they were laughing and i didn't know what to do. everything was wrong and i didn't sleep even though i was so tired. how do you sleep when your blood gets lazy, when it skips your fingers and your feet? 

the next day we rubbed our eyes and ate toasted sandwiches (standard) and caught the sleeper train to varanasi. i remember reading shantaram with babies crying and the light switching on and off and looking up to see my lewis watching from his top bunk, and my blood momentarily forgot its job again.
and after the usual battle with rickshaw drivers who would be happy to take us anywhere except where we had planned to go, we arrived in varanasi. it's supposed to be a very spiritual place, and i say 'supposed to' because it's hard to be spiritual when a dead dog is lying grotesquely at your feet next to holographic pictures of ganesh (300 rupees each madam a bargain). we paid a little extra for the luxury of air conditioning in our room, and often i would open the door to a spread-eagled body on our double bed, drying sweat with a hindi game show playing on the small television set. i would sit on the balcony and smoke a clove cigarette (175 rupees a packet) and think about going for a walk, which i could almost do on my own now (almost - still a nervous nancy), or think about the little kids on the train ride to this place who had charcoal around their eyes and crawled under our legs begging for coins, or think about the lifeless body on the bed just inside and the friends that were also with me and how living on top of each other has not made us crazy but only closer, think about music and performing and know that there is really not a single doubt in my mind that that is the plan for the next part of my life. butt it out. breathe in the clove taste and lick it off my lips, shut shantaram and turn off the television.

"i don't have a soul like you/the only one i have/is the one i stole from you"