‘My karma,’ she went on, ‘really has changed. I’m into a whole new realm.’
I couldn’t take this any more.
‘Karma?’ I said, slowly. ‘Karma? My fucking arse. Why don’t the three of you get a life?’
Silence descended on the table. Fee and Caz stared at me, their facial expressions utterly in tune with one another. Neither of them looked even the slightest bit angry with me, or even offended. They both, quite transparently, just felt sorry for me. In their eyes, I was now on a par with the lepers.
Liz, however, didn’t feel sorry for me. This much was obvious. I was on the receiving end of one of her looks. Not, in fact, of her looks, but look. This was a look. Translated into English it said, basically, ‘That’s it.’ I had reached the end of the road. She’d had enough of me.
‘Come on, Fee. Come on, Caz,’ she said.
They took their boiled eggs and moved to another table.
That afternoon, in a complex operation of ostentatious secrecy, Liz moved her mattress and backpack into Fee and Caz’s room.
I was sipping my afternoon tea – one of many afternoon teas – in the hotel courtyard a few days after Liz’s defection, when I heard the sound of screeching tyres coming from immediately outside. There didn’t seem to be many cars in India, and hardly any in Pushkar – let alone ones that could get up enough speed to be able to screech to a halt – so I looked up from my book to see what was going on.
A fat man with a moustache, dressed in jacket and tie, appeared in the courtyard at a run, looking stressed. He examined us all one by one, then, when he saw the blob in the corner that used to be Ranj, he started howling.
The howl brought three more people into the courtyard, one of whom was a woman in a sari. She took one look at Ranj, then screamed and fainted. The other two people were youngish guys in jeans and designer T-shirts.
‘Fuckin’ell man,’ said one of them. ‘You fuckin’ twat.’ I recognized the language as deepest Putney. This was obviously a brother. He grabbed Ranj by the arms, but Ranj refused to support his own weight, so the second young guy approached and took him by the other arm. Together, they frogmarched him out of the courtyard.
Ranj didn’t particularly seem to wake up through the whole episode until I heard his voice wafting in from outside, saying ‘Wait… Wait… Wait… WAITIJUST WAIT.’
Ranj then reappeared, on doddery legs, and walked up to me.
‘I want you to have this,’ he said, putting his chillum into my hand, and closing my fingers around it.
‘Thanks, man,’ I said.
He gave me one last don’t-mind-me-Pm-just-off-to-the-gallows look and tottered away, into the arms of a waiting brother.
The pair of them disappeared, and the car’s engine started up. It then cut out, and I heard the sound of a car door slamming and an argument. All I could make out was someone saying, ‘He’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.’
There was a lull for a second, then the bigger of the two brothers appeared in the courtyard, marched up to me, grabbed me by the shirt, pulled me out of my chair, and slammed me against the wall.
‘Are you his dealer, then?’ he shouted. ‘ARE YOU? DID YOU DO THIS TO HIM?’
‘No, man. I’ve never dealt in my life,’ I stammered, suddenly convinced that I was about to be killed.
‘DID YOU SELL THAT SHIT TO HIM? DID YOU?’
‘I d-d-didn’t. I s-swear to God.’
‘I SHOULD FUCKIN’ KILL YOU!’
‘You’ve got the wrong person. I swear on my life. On my mother’s life.’
He let go of me, and snarled.
‘Scum. You fucking scum.’
Then he spat on my shoes, and left.
The hotel receptionist shouted something at him in Hindi, and in response he tossed a few banknotes on to the ground as he disappeared around the corner.
I rearranged my shirt and tried to get my breath back. The entire courtyard was silent, and everyone was staring at me. I tried to chuckle and say that the guy was a loony, but no sound would come out of my mouth.
I then noticed that Liz, Fee and Caz had watched the whole thing from a balcony above. Liz, I could tell, was almost wetting herself with delight, but was straining every facial muscle to keep her pleasure hidden behind the smug, disappointed, told-you-so look that was plastered over her features.
Fee and Caz, judging by appearances, just felt sorry for me.
I had barely recovered from my brush with death when Liz descended from the temple that was Fee and Caz’s room to give me ‘some news’.
‘What? What is it?’ I said, still feeling a little rattled.
‘I’ve made a decision. There’s something I have to do.’
‘What?’
‘Well – Fee and Caz have been telling me about a place, not far from here, that I’d like to visit.’
‘So?’
‘It’s not the kind of place that you can just go and look at, though. If you want to go there, you have to make a commitment to stay at least two weeks.’
‘What! Why?’
‘It’s an ashram.’
‘An ashram? What’s an ashram when it’s at home?’
‘It’s a Hindu place of retreat for meditation, reflection and spiritual furtherance.’
‘ What are you talking about?’
‘Look – I don’t want to go over this ground with you again. You’re obviously impervious to… to what this country is trying to teach you, and I think we should just stick with the facts. I am going to go to the ashram with Fee and Caz.’
‘For two weeks?’
‘For at least two weeks.’
‘Well that’s that, then.’
‘What’s what?’
‘You’ve abandoned me. That’s it. I’m on my own.’
‘No, you’re not. I realize you don’t want to come to the ashram with us, but we can always meet up…’
‘Too sodding right I’m not coming to an ashram. I don’t want to get brainwashed by some bunch of Hare Krishna loony mental headcases. No way. I’m not going anywhere near…’
‘Stop. STOP! I don’t want to hear this. Your prejudices are…’
‘PREJUDICES! I’m not prejudiced – I just don’t want to end up running around Leicester Square with a shaved head telling everyone I love them.’
‘That, Dave, is called prejudice, in case you didn’t know what the word means. We’re talking about a whole religion here, followed by hundreds of millions of people, and all you can think of is some… some… typically twisted Western manifestation of an Eastern philosophy. You are closed-minded, I really don’t know why you even bothered coming here.’
‘Because you persuaded me to.’
‘Don’t give me that. You wanted to come.’
‘Only so I could be with you. And now you’re deserting me.’
‘I’m following a calling. You’re welcome to join me, or to meet me afterwards, but I am not going to sacrifice this opportunity just for the sake of your petty-mindedness.’