Carpet Fitters, Coffee and Rum
Allahabad, India
I often get the feeling that when walking along a crowded street in India, it is all part of a gigantic film-set; I am part of it, but somehow I am not. As a traveller, I am just passing through and there is a temporary even dream-like nature to it all. Sometimes, however, the situation can become all too real. Now, this can be quite pleasurable, but if things go wrong it can leave you with the feeling that you wish it was indeed just part of a film; the sensation of fast-forward and get me out of here quick!
It was a terrible din and it was incessant. I wished it were a film. But it wasn’t. I just wanted the banging to go away. Why was it pestering me so much? What did I do to deserve this annoying racket? I craved peace and quiet. But to be truthful, I knew the answers to those questions. And I knew that the banging would persist for most of the day. Hangovers are like that: they are a kind of payback for the night before. Now that may be all well and good if you had enjoyed yourself during the night before, but it is a tough price to pay if you had not.
I was trapped. I was trapped in a hotel I didn’t want to be in; in a town I wanted to get away from. And it was entirely my fault. The cycle rickshaw had delivered me to the hotel the previous evening, and through the hammering and banging of a terrible hangover my humiliation and predicament was beginning to dawn on me. I should have been half way to Delhi via Jaipur and feeling good, but was festering in bed feeling awful. I had missed my train and achieved only a journey to the railway station and back.
With the din continuing inside my head, I staggered to the nearest eatery and soon found myself sucking on bits of pineapple that seemed to have had all of the flavour extracted. It was like eating carpet. The day-after-the-night-before feeling is always an ugly experience and too often results in the taste buds going out on strike in conjunction with the salivary glands. I blame carpet fitters for this. Over the years I have developed an irrational dislike for them. Any expert in the art of the hangover knows full well that miniature carpet-fitters work all night long inside your mouth to place a fitted carpet around the tongue and on the roof of the mouth. The end-result is as pleasurable as…well, chewing on a piece of carpet.
My current situation had started ten days earlier. I had arranged to meet my friend Shweta in Allahabad. Shweta was not like other women I had known; they had all been western and she was Indian. I had never really got to hang out with an Indian woman before. We had initially met a few months earlier on a train and I had returned to India for another long stint and had come to see her for a few days.
On the first day, we visited a restaurant in one of the city’s up-market hotels. It was the type of place where annoying waiters hover, and insist on attending to every simple need because obviously you possess half a brain. The assumption being, that you are incapable of performing the simplest of tasks such as pouring water into your own glass. The trick is to be quick and fill it yourself before they can get to the bottle and intrude upon your space any more than they are already doing. Waiters all over the world are generally trained to be non-intrusive when really intrusion forms the basis of the job itself.
It was to be expected though; after all we were in an international hotel. When Shweta ordered anything she would speak to the waiter in English. Her English wasn’t too good; nor was his. She was a native Hindi speaker and so was he. So what’s with the English I asked Shweta. Her explanation was that as we were in an international hotel, English is the main language. But we were in Allahabad, a provincial city that rarely sees any foreigners. Being an international person myself, I pretended that I understood the English thing, but didn’t really. It was all so sophisticated.
I ordered a coke: “Coke, please”. The waiter looked puzzled. I repeated my order. He still looked puzzled. I repeated about three times, but he was none the wiser – nor was Shweta. I concluded that my pronunciation needed adjusting to “Cok”. He beamed and said “Ah, Cok!” I thought to myself, “Yes, that is what I have been saying for the past two minutes.”
The next day, we took endless cycle rickshaw rides and visited museums, went to the Nehru house (which has been turned into a tourist attraction), and took a boat journey on the river where the 2001 Kumbha Mela religious celebration took place. I loved being with Shweta. She was serene and exuded an inner peace, no doubt developed from years of meditation that she had done. She had a certain coolness; a particular sophistication that I was attracted to.
I could have fallen for this girl. Actually, I was on the verge. There aren’t many who make me feel that way, but she did. In fact, there have been only two in recent times – I can’t even say that I can count them on one hand: just forty per cent of one. The other was a Scandinavian, who I also met in India. She was a similar type: cool and intriguing. Oh, and I nearly forgot, both were very good looking – which kind of helps! Shweta, with her big eyes, long features and hair down to her legs, and the other with a hint of Latin looks, straggly Viking hair, and a beautiful smile.
Unfortunately, Shweta had to return to her hometown for a family function and after riding with her in a cycle rickshaw to the station to say goodbye, I was left to my own devices. After she went, I just wanted to leave. Everything in Allahabad merely reminded me of her. So I was preoccupied with getting a train out of the place. It was the winter holiday time, however, when many people take their vacation. Consequently, the trains were booked up for days to come. I managed to get one that would be leaving – in one week: one more week in Allahabad, a town of chilly December mornings, cycle rickshaws, grimness and memories of Shweta. The thought of an extra week all alone filled me with dread. I had already had a gut-full of Allahabad, its museums, temples, and holy rivers.
The only thing that kept me going was my daily visits to the Indian Coffee House (ICH). The ICH is a chain of basic but excellent restaurants serving cheap snacks and the best coffee in the whole of India, and are to be found throughout the country. Huge black and white framed photographs of Nehru, Gandhi, and Indira Gandhi usually adorn the walls of each one and the efficient (and non-intrusive) waiters are dressed in shabby (off) white uniforms. They are pretty basic places that haven’t seen a lick of paint for years and where decor generally takes a back seat to the low prices and delicious dosas, sandwiches and masala chicken on offer. This ICH was no different. The place was always packed with men, sitting at wobbly tables on wobbly chairs, hiding behind newspapers or discussing the issues of the day. I usually left on a caffeine-induced high with a splitting headache after having swilled down four cups of coffee. My twice-daily visits were sadly to be the highlight of my day.
After one hundred cups of coffee and endless visits to the ICH the day of my journey eventually arrived. At last, I could check out of my dreary hotel and leave even drearier Allahabad behind. Or so I thought. I didn’t account for the effects of Old Monk Indian rum. I am not a spirits drinker. If I drink, it is always beer and nothing stronger. I can drink copious amounts of the stuff and still function quite normally; but a few glasses of spirits sends my head into a spiralling whirl, resulting in a pig-sick nausea that leaves me with a feeling of wanting to be dead. Indian spirits – the label on the bottle usually notes “Permitted flavours and colours” – permitted by whom I often wonder.
So why on earth did I buy a bottle of deadly hangover Old Monk on the day of my departure? I remember now – it was to give some to the hotel staff as a New Year’s gift. I had given them a large glassful each, yet still had half a bottle left. The question should be – why on earth did I proceed to start to drink the stuff myself? I suppose it was out of relief and a celebration based on my imminent departure. I was about to leave Allahabad and head to Jaipur in Rajasthan, before arriving at my final destination, Delhi. But celebration soon turned into complete and utter misery.
I had a few glasses before getting into the cycle rickshaw and heading to the railway station. I needed to find berth number thirty-four in coach S4 on the train heading to Jaipur. A simple task, you may think. The rickshaw man was pedalling away to his heart’s delight when I asked him to pull over for a vomit-stop. I staggered toward the roadside to throw-up. Yes, Old Monk had kicked-in. Five minutes later there is another vomit-stop. Well, after three vomit-stops (the driver must have been terribly impressed!) in twenty minutes we finally reach the station. So as you can imagine, at this stage, things are no longer so sophisticated, and such a simple task, no longer simple.
It was a hell of a lot of vomit considering the small amount of food and rum ingested. Based on more than a few drunken episodes and bouts of dysentery over the years, I have developed my own personal theory of vomit. There is in fact a vomit law: something to do with the amount expelled being inversely proportionate to the quantity of food and drink taken in. Any decent “vomiter” who has ever been drunk or has had dysentery will tell you this.
I pay the rickshaw man and head into the station with my brain in a swirl and that wanting-to-be-dead nauseating feeling running amuck. The board containing information about trains and platforms gyrates before my eyes. Eventually, after gyratory overload, I realise that I’ve been trying to read the board written in Hindi. So then I notice the board written in English and manage to focus on it. After having read it four times and having forgotten it three, I forge onward to find platform five. I decide to walk at a brisk pace to try to give the impression that I am stone cold sober – despite being very drunk. Instinct tells me that I am more likely to stagger if I walk slowly and then everyone will see that I am under the effects. Warped drunken thinking has a logic all of its own.
The crowds are swaying about in front of me. Or is it I who is swaying about in front of them? I eventually find the right platform and my train, but negotiating the correct coach is just too much. I am unable to focus upon, let alone remember, the coach numbers. I admit failure. Fast-forward and get me out of here! Well, amazingly, someone did, but I can’t quite recall whom.
A few days later I actually managed to board the train to Jaipur, then onward to Delhi where I soon find myself travelling along the Main Bazaar in a cycle-rickshaw. I am exactly where I want to be – next to the girl who I want to be sitting next to: my Scandinavian friend who accounts for the other twenty per cent of one hand. We are speaking in English. Once again it is all very sophisticated. We are heading to the railway station for her to board the Tamil Nadu Express to Chennai. After she goes I am stuck in Delhi for another week, waiting for my flight home, but this time I am adamant that Old Monk will not rear its ugly head.
And guess what? It didn’t. No drunken rickshaw escapades, no carpet fitters, no flavourless pineapples, no blistering hangovers, and definitely no more vomit-inducing Old Monk rum. I’d learnt my lesson. Allahabad was a sobering experience. Well, at least until destruction in a bottle once again comes to tempt me in the dead of an Indian night. In the meantime, rewind it all and when it gets to the part where I am sitting in the rickshaw with Shweta or my Scandinavian friend, then please press pause. It is a place in time where I always want to be. But I guess it can’t be done. Life’s no film – not even in India.
