This is part of a story I'm working from notes I made travelling by myself on the cheap in India and Nepal in 1979.

INDIA 1979

I’m sitting on my pack on the platform of the New Dehli train depot, waiting for the early morning train to Varanasi, staring at the toes of my worn black shoes when in the corner of my eye I see a dirty and tattered red sari come into view and I look up into the emaciated face of a woman with her hands upturned pleading to me in a soft voice, pleeze sir, paise and I stare at the bones of her skull etched finely beneath the taut firm flesh and her eyes, unnaturally large and beautiful, her arms the size of a couple of my fingers, standing there, over me, pleeze sir and before I can reach into my pocket to give her some frail token of my pity, she looks up, frightened as rapid footfalls advance under the warning voice of a man and she turns and ducks back under the platform as the guard follows her with his lathi stick raised to strike, but she is too fast in disappearing into the underworld that I glimpse when I go over to the edge after he is gone and peer beneath to behold a world of sacking and crates and little fires spread beneath, as far as I can see, hundreds of bright eyes shining, staring silent and wide in the barely lit gloom of another world.

I was doing it. I was scared and I was alone. Had been ever since I’d flown into Bombay from Athens on a $100 Air Bangladesh flight. After I’d gotten through customs and immigration, I stepped into a whirl of color and noise. The terminal was filled with people moving in every direction beneath the slow circular beat of ceiling fans. The front doors were on the far side of the terminal, a glare of light that erased any details of faces or colors around it. I edged my way toward the light. When I got closer, I could see many people outside, standing in the direct glare of the sun. They faced the doors, densely crushed together, seemingly waiting for an invitaiton to enter the darkness. As I stepped into their midst, I was assailed by every question, asking for rupee, paise, sell camera, watch, calculator, ride to hotel, go to Poona to see the guru, pleeze sir. An emaciated baby was held up before my eyes, the blinding sun turning everything to parchment as I felt out of myself from a constant drumming.

I had been walking through the Chandi Chowk in Old Dehli. Been in India for a couple of weeks. I’d been staying at Ringmos Guest House, but after a few days moved into a smaller place. I felt pretty off kilter, disoriented and woke up one night thinking I’d better not smoke too much the gooey black hashish so prevalent with the heads at Ringmos. Decided I’d best lay off that sh#t at least until I got my feet on the ground.

Like I said, I was walking through the bazaar one day and this nicely dressed Sikh gentleman stepped out of an alley and gently took me by the elbow. He asked me if I would like my fortune told and I thought, well, okay, why not? I followed him into the alley which led to a nice shaded garden behind the street. We sat down across from each other and he said before we began that he would like to prove himself. He had me think of the names of my parents and siblings and their birthdays, not saying them or course, and he wrote something down on little pieces of paper and wadded them up and placed them in my hand. I don’t know how he did it, but he was right on on everything, even their middle names and birthdates. I thought, well, this guy has something going for him. So we agreed on a price, which was somewhat expensive on my meager budget, but this seemed too good to miss. He didn’t really tell me a fortune like, you’re gonna be a millionare or get laid by Raquel Welch or anything, but more functional, like numbers and letters and colors and combinations thereof that were auspicious or not so good. He gave me a couple of amulets he said I was to wear and someday in the future I would meet him and he would know me by them. Then we went back into the bazaar and he told me to please not try and follow him and that he would see me again someday.

After that, I felt really pretty weird, like I needed to get out of the sun or something. So I went back to my little room and didn’t leave it for three days. I had the acute feeling that I was completely transparent, that anyone on the street could look right through me and see what was inside and then they could own my soul and do with me whatever they wanted. I thought I was going insane. The walls were transparent, I was transparent. If I just lay there, the eyes would overlook me and I was safe. The feeling gradually dissipated by the third day. When I woke up the morning of the fourth day, I felt a lot more coalesed. I lay there, staring at the ceiling listening to the buzz of the flies traversing the room. A train whistle blew, then faded back into the morning sounds of the city, flowing by my window as the rasp of motor rickshaws, the scuffle of sandals on the sidewalk, the calls of people to each other, the closing of doors down the hall, every sound rising out of and falling back into this soft river in the brief coolness of the morning.

The paint on the walls and ceiling had peeled in innumerable places, creating an irregular map of some strange land in brown and white. I lay there wondering if this map could be of more value to me than any offered in an atlas. I was reminded of a painting by Claude Monet I had seen in the National Gallery in London. I had walked into a room, one wall of which was a formless mass of color. There was nothing else in the room. I walked across the room and read the card by the canvas:

Water Lilies
Claude Monet

Nothing on the canvas remotely resembled water lilies. I walked to the opposite side of the room. Something clicked in my head and I saw the painting as pink and red water lilies, seen close up floating on a greenish pond reflecting a cloudy sky, with some leafy willow bows suspended in the foreground. I could turn the image on or off by looking at different parts of the canvas. Here, formless mass. Here, a pond with water lilies.

I thought to myself, that fourth morning, you know, this is what you came for, Bobby. You came here to twist your head a bit. Don’t chicken out and get the next flight out back to your safe little home. Get out there and do it.

And so I did. I went down and paid the bill for the room, much to the obvious relief of the management, who had been knocking at the door the day before. I realized I was hungry as hell. I went out and I ate and as I sat there, eating my eggs and toast and drinking my chai, watching the swirl of people, I thought of that painting again. I decided I was going to stay and see what I could see.