Monday, February 13, 2006

I'm flying...

I’m in Trivandrum right on the southern tip of India.

The 11th was a particularly emotional day for me. My head was all over the place.

The afternoon was spent online chatting to my ex. I say chatting…

Not really pleasant being stuck in a computer room while trying to maintain the focus in order to choose careful words for the MSN messenger game. Sarcasm, for a start, must be eradicated.

Anyway, I realised that there were a lot of issues surrounding our relationship and breakup that needed confronting and discussing. So we battled it out as best and as honestly as we could given the frustrating and limited medium. I don’t know how the conversation ended, but my head was all over the shop when I finished. A mess of guilt and confusion and yet satisfaction that I’d managed to say anything at all.

I walked back to my guesthouse in Hampi and on arriving I find Josh, my guitar-playing traveling partner from Dharmsala, Rishikesh and Varanasi is there, waiting for me. I was really pleased to see him as I hadn’t heard anything from him since we’d parted ways before Goa.

I was due to leave on the 11th, just a few hours after he arrived, so I sat him down and we talked. Soon after we began chatting a girl came and sat down at our table and involved herself in our conversation. The minute she sat down I realized I had nothing to say to her. I was supposed to be leaving in a matter of hours and I’d just met Josh who I could have talked to for days. I couldn’t face making irritated small talk with her or talking to him with an audience so I mustered as much politesse and humility as I could and asked her to leave us alone. What to do? I’m glad I did though. I was being honest to myself and to her. She took it remarkably well.

Josh seemed really well. Hair tied back, tanned, more confident. He told me that he too had made quite a name for himself in Goa, playing paid gigs at big restaurants. Good lad.

It was really good to see him. He did, however, point out that I was still managing to hang around with Israelis again. What can I say, he’s observant.

We exchanged the songs we’d since written and played a few together (like old times!). And then after all this, my mind still racing and excited, I had to say my goodbyes to everyone at the guesthouse in Hampi. As I was leaving as part of a group of nine people, this became quite a long goodbye. Everyone was hugging everyone and making those strange hollow promises to each other about sending emails and itineraries for future meetings.

And then, after nearly four weeks on my rooftop in Hampi, land of Kibbutz! The Musical, I left with my crew in a jeep. The ride was alive with quiet excitement. As we sat, crammed into the fast-moving jeep with pumping Indian electronica blaring at us, we all smiled at each other in the dark, with silent understanding. We didn’t need words. Words are overrated I think.

The nine of us then took a ten hour bus to Bangalore, the technological centre of India. One wealthy place it seems. We parted ways in a chai shop, enjoying more heartfelt goodbyes. Myself, Merav (my Sri Lanka partner) and Shani (my current mission) spent a day wondering around the most Westernised part of India I’ve seen so far. It is full of malls. I saw Reebok shops, Marks and Spencer, Mango clothes stores. I could have been in Leeds.

We spent most of the day in a posh coffee shop and I talked to one of the workers about Bryan Adams. He’s famous in India, apparently. Bless.

Then came my time for my last goodbye for a while. Shani. I was touched, she said she was going to miss me and didn’t want me to leave. With a seemingly mandatory disclaimer about non-attachment love and an agreement about making no solid arrangements or commitments, we decided that it would indeed by lovely to meet up in a couple of weeks and put an end to all the fist-biting tension between us.

So I have something painfully tantalizing to look forward to. Breathe. Sigh. Smile.

Then myself and Merav took a bus to Trivandrum. It was a very pleasant ride but at around nineteen hours it was certainly one of the longest bus rides I’ve done.

The stops in the ride were a revelation. My previous trips would be punctuated by leisurely visits to the cheapest of cheap dhabas by the side of the dusty road where chai and thali could be enjoyed. This trip we stopped at full-on clean motels with organized service and expensive food. And yet we were given about five minutes to get off the bus, drink chai, eat food, smoke a cigarette (in Merav’s case), go to the toilet and get back on the bus. It’s just not possible. In a nineteen hour ride, what is the rush, really?

PJ Harvey, Pink Floyd, Spoozle and an Israeli singer who sounds a bit like recent Radiohead kept us company for most of the journey. Conversation and sleep did the rest.

So tomorrow, a new country.

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