‘Now we’re here, I think things can calm down a bit.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Let’s try and get on, yeah?’
‘OK.’
‘Both of us,’ I said, pointedly. I’d only really apologized in the hope that it would make apologize. After all, she was the one really acting the arsehole, not me.
‘All right. We’ll both try and be a bit nicer to each other, then.’
That didn’t really qualify as an apology in my book, but at least it came with a genuine smile, so after a brief consultation with my ever-swelling dick, I decided to accept it as a peace-offering.
I reached out my hand and smiled back.
‘Bygones?’ I said.
‘Bygones.’
She took my hand.
‘We’re stuck with each other now, so we might as well make an effort,’ I said, giving her hand a little squeeze.
‘I think we can get on,’ she said, squeezing back.
The joint went backwards and forwards between us a few times, with our hands remaining interlocked. Veins in my drought-stricken groin started singing joyous blood-worshipping anthems.
While she sucked out the last of the smoke, I reached over and stroked the back of her hand. We remained like this for a good while, staring in amicable silence at the staggeringly beautiful view of the Himalayas: lush foothills, with every curve shaped into a paddy-field, topped by enormous snowy peaks. I had never seen anything so impressive.
Yes – at last – I was pleased to be in India. I could feel the knot of tension in my stomach beginning to loosen. Paul and James had been right about travel, after all. This was an amazing experience. And the dope really was cheap.
‘Shall I roll another?’ I said, eventually.
‘Why not?’
She blinked at me, slowly.
‘Shall we have a smoke in the room?’
‘OK.’
Still hand in hand, we shuffled inside.
She sat on the bed, while I locked the door and drew the curtains. I slid on to the bed next to her, and we stared at each other, half-smirks playing on our mouths.
‘Can’t just sit here all day,’ I said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
She raised an eyebrow at me, and I answered her by plucking out a few Rizlas. I licked and stuck them together, while Liz settled back against the headboard. With the joint completed, I sat next to her, placed it in her hand and extended the lighter.
‘Would Madame care to commence?’
She grinned, and planted the joint droopily into the corner of her mouth. I lit it for her, enjoying the way her eyes narrowed when she inhaled. In a silence broken only by the crackling weed, we passed the joint between us. I felt the world outside gradually recede away to nothing, as I concentrated on her face, her fingers and the smoke swirling out of her lips.
When the tiny stub burned my fingers, I tossed it on to the floor, placed my arm around Liz’s neck and kissed her deeply on the mouth. I could taste every crease in her lips, every twitch of her tongue. The difference between the hardness of her teeth and the softness of her mouth struck me as a miracle of evolution. For a while, our kiss became the entire universe.
Then she was taking off my shirt, and I was taking off her shirt, and it occurred to us that we really weren’t getting very far like that, and we leaped off the bed, stripped ourselves and hopped back in.
Through a haze of mounting lust, I noticed that she kept her knickers on.
As we swamped each other in more kisses, I started trying to discreetly remove her pants without her noticing. In response, what had previously been an ‘Mmmm’ started turning itself into a ‘Nnnn’. I had to try and hurry before the ‘o’ came along. My attempt to yank the pants over her buttocks made an ominous ripping sound and broke the spell.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No sex.’
‘Why?’
She kissed me, even more passionately than before.
‘No sex,’ she repeated, pausing to wipe saliva from her chin.
‘Why?’ I said, during the next pause for breath.
She answered me by turning me over on to my back and disappearing under the sheet.
‘I love James,’ she said, then shut me up by wrapping her mouth around the end of my penis.
For the rest of the week we hardly left the Rainbow Lodge, and spent our days smoking, eating, chatting, going for the occasional wander and having almost-sex.
For the first time, I actually liked India. The vibes with Liz were on the mend, and all the hassles of travelling seemed much less intense and demoralizing now that we had found a calm little enclave where we could pass the days.
I also lost my aversion to Indian yoghurt when I was introduced to Bhang Lassi, which is a drink made out of milk, yoghurt and hash. The superb thing was, you could order it from the hotel staff, which came in very handy when you were feeling too stoned to roll another joint. I didn’t really like the taste, but became fond of Bhang Lassi anyway, since the best way to relieve the boredom of constant dope-smoking is to drink it.
There were loads of other travellers hanging out at the hotel, and because everyone shared joints it was an extremely sociable place. You ended up talking to a whole range of people, and most of our evenings were spent in pleasant, semi-comatose card-games which were dominated by the passing of spliffs and the exchange of ideas about travelling. I was mainly into the cards and the drugs, while Liz took to all the philosophizing with depressing enthusiasm.
No one ever seemed to get tired of talking about Indiaahh. I didn’t see what there was to theorize about, and how you could possibly set about trying to a country, but everyone, it seemed, had a theory. Liz, predictably enough, lapped it all up, and I could tell that my cynicism about the whole thing was beginning to get on her nerves.
One guy, called Jonah, had been travelling almost nonstop for seventeen years. He claimed it had been almost a decade since he last wore shoes, and warbled on indefinitely about how inhuman it was to lose contact with the soil. He also said that whenever he encountered a beggar, instead of giving them money, he gave them a hug.
For hours on end, he held court over the group with tales of disease, robbery, drug abuse and foot-rot. These stories were just overtures, however, to help him draw a crowd. And it was only when he had a proper audience that he would embark on his favourite topic: a Unifying Theory of India.
‘India,’ says Jonah, ‘is at the same time the most beautiful and the most horrific country – and Indians are both the warmest and the most brutal people on earth.’
Although Jonah has barely warmed to his theme, Belle, an American hippie dressed in military fatigues, jumps in. ‘India,’ she says, ‘is a beautiful country, but let’s face it, guys – it’s ruined by the people. They’re all obsessed with money. They always want something off you. All they can think about is selling and buying.’
‘You haven’t scratched below the surface, man,’ says Ing, a Scandinavian who has the build of a famine victim, but always seems to be eating. (Intestinal worm, according to Liz.) ‘Commerce is simply a modern, kind of, thin sheet of plastic that has been wrapped over the rich carpet of India’s history. I mean, this country has been invaded so many times, but it has always survived with its own culture in place. Capitalism is just the invader of today, and when it is defeated like all the other armies, there will be left behind the same spiritual people who always have lived here.’
‘It’s very cheap,’ says Brian from Nottingham. ‘You can get cheap things.’
‘But… what’s your name again?’ stutters Belle.
‘Ing.’
‘Ing?’
‘Ing.’
‘But Ing – capitalism isn’t going to vanish like all the other invaders. This time, India’s lost the fight. Its character is disappearing. Only a fool can say that India is still a spiritual country.’
In England,’ says Brian, ‘a banana costs up to twenty pence, but here you can get a bunch of ten to fifteen bananas for as little as thirty pee. That’s a huge saving.’