Rascals of India 1

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OK, this is the whole story in a nutshell. After some interesting cups of tea and lively conversation, "James" spent five hundred dollars on carpets said to be from Kashmir that, in other carpet makers opinion's, cost about six dollars each.

That was the nutshell version. What follows now is the full version. AND ENDS UP THE CARPETS ARE FANTASTIC IN THE BEDROOM in the cottage, just like the old fellow predicted, and feel silky and soft to the toes and feet. So here goes the rest of the story.

So we were in this hotel called "The Taj". All the hotels on the Carolyn Myss tour seemed to called the Taj. I had just had the worst meal of my life in India and I told the front desk so. Or maybe only think I told them so. Like, I would have told them. My stomach was churning and I left the hotel and went out for a walk. Even on these tours with Best Selling Authors putting their ideas for books together on the tour, you have to get away and see a little of the "real India" on your own. OK, so maybe a few anger issues had finally rubbed off on "James". One of you travelblog readers commented--she is a stellar massage therapist--that Carolyn Myss may have taken on "the karma and the anger" of her students without knowing it. This can happen with healer folk...to award benefit of a doubt.

OK, the name of the place wasn't really KARMA SUTRAVILLE, but Khajuraho. (Say that three times without smiling.) So walked out of the broad entrance way out to the dusty road and the man stationed at the gate, naturally, dressed in a turban like guru, said to me, "No problems." I remember this distinctly.

No problems, I thought. That's cool. Must be nice people in this town, or something nice anyway. Safe. It's a safe town, I thought. Cool. So I take a right turn. I'm heading toward the temples of Karma Sutraville but don't know it. I can't see a damn thing. No streetlights. And there had been a sound and light show at Karma Sutraville that we were all supposed to see that evening--some modern technological wonder--but the guy with the anger issues who is Carolyn's "50%-50% partner, self described, had told us it was cancelled. Well, Mr Anger Issues and a bunch of others went anyway. That peed "James" off. We were on our own. It felt good to be away from the anger and the bad food. How would we fare? Well, no problems.

I was walking. This one guy passed me on the left in a bicycle and slowed down. "Hello, English?" he asked. How quaint I thought. I smiled, and this other guy walked up on my right. Then a motorcycle with two guys. It felt like a crowd. I remained cordial, although my alert went up. No problem here. No problems, said the doorman guru. I cannot remember their names, perhaps because now, I don't care to remember their names. But they were cordial enough. And I'd been sitting next to Mr. Anger Issues on the bus all the way from wherever we were before...Agra. It was like, a four hour bus ride and I'd had it with how he had promoted "Anatomy of the Spirt" and made Carolyns' carreer. This guy works with everybody, Wayne Dyer, Joan Boreshenko, the list on and on. He was a former commodities trader. An okay guy overall except for the anger issues. His list was long and he'd made so many "healer's" careers that it was embarrassing. He did agree to look at one of two of my book proposals after the four hours of my listening to him. They said they had a little shop on the side of the road. Sure enough, there was their little shop off the side of the road. My walk lasted all of about ninety feet from the "Taj" and I followed them in.

I told them I was interested in a Kafta (not a Kafka, as in Franz) it's a bit of casual wear in India for the men. Have you seen that dress in the photos, below? Okay, that's a white Kafta. I'd wanted something with some color. (Is anybody reading this? I feel like I'm taking down notes here for my next play). So this one guy, the guy to left of the tall guy in the white Kafta with prayer cap, pulls out some fabric. There were shelves and shelves of different colored fabrics and carpets on the walls and on the floor. The other guys take off and come back with cigs they'd packed with, well, wouldn't want to name names or get anybody busted.
So they invited me to sit on the floor and offered me one or two. I said, no. They asked if I'd like tea. I said Yes. Then I tried to do the Namaste thing. They didn't approve of my "Namaste".

In most of India, people bow with their hands together and say, Namaste. It means, God within Me Greets God Within You, and May We Always Meet in this Place. The classic image is of two Tibetan pilgrims on a thin path in the great Himalayas, just north of Karma Sutraville, and what will they do when they meet face to face? "Namaste.' It can also mean the Best within me Greets the Best within you. I thought I might be in trouble if these guys didn't go for my "Namaste." i mean, people don't shakes hands there, they are always doing this bowing thing, when they meet and when they part. It's kind of nice.

(This is feeling more like notes a one act play. How odd to choose the Travelblog form to scribble out this story...what is a blog? what is a book? what is a play?)

I didn't have my hat on, the "Indiana Jones" hat, as Carolyn liked to point out so often. I had on a dark baseball cap that said, "Best Man". It went back to my mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary. Dad had chosen me as his Best Man. It meant something to me, even to all the family.

The boys pointed out my hat. They knew some english. "Best Man, you are the Best Man!" Other guys in India had called me everything from Maharajah to Gentleman to Shahruk Khan (a huge Bollywood star there, sort of cross between Danny Kaye and Bill Murray) to James Bond. Best man was fine by me.

At this point, this very tall guy with thick glasses breezes into the room and the boys go to the side of the room like butterflies. This tall guy agrees that Namaste isn't said here. Oh? I light an offered cigarette. The tall guy, Queebie, more or less by name, claps his hands. "Did you offer him tea?" Queebie throws the shirts and fabrics aside and pulls out a carpet. "I was interested in a shirt," I say. 'And I don't have much money to spend." Why did I say this? Because I swear I had an intuition that said, "Don't buy a carpet. And figure it out, just the tour with Myss was expensive, $6,000.00 before I'd even left Florida. Most of these same tours can be done for half that price. I don't know if they'd be of the same "quality", as Mr. Anger Issues had pointed out to me on that long bus ride. Then my first tea arrived. I started to sip it. And I started to feel pretty good. As Queebie kept pulling out carpets, I felt better and better. I tried to study my tea. There was a little dark thing at the bottom of the glass that I thought was a tea leaf. But it was sort of roundish with a whisp of brown that hovered over it. Later, Mr. Anger Issues told me how he'd gone to a shop in the South and he swore they'd put Opium in his tea. Usually, at these shops, they offer you beer. You start to drink, feel pretty good, buy.

"Don't buy a carpet," I'd heard my intuition say. After my second cup of tea, I heard, "Don't buy two carpets." I was on a roll. You see, all of these carpets were from Kashmir, and made of very rare Kashmir silk. Queebie would get one of the boys to hold the carpet at the ends, and then turn the carpet upside down. "See?" said Queebie, "It changes color! That is Kashmir!" I didn't know what he meant but the colors started to mix together in my mind. "Kashmir?" I'd say. "Turn the carpet," would say Queebie, or "Q" as I'd started to call him. I couldn't get any of their names. Then I said, What about Namaste.

"No" said Q. And the boys all shook their heads "no."

"But everybody does...um...you know." "And I started to bow, but Q signaled the boy (on the left at the car) and the boy put his hands over mine and then put my hands in my lap. One of the other guys lit up another one of those special cigs. "Okay," I said, wanting to get along. Then Q bowed, with one hand to his chest. I bowed this way too. Q smiled. He lied full out on one of the larger carpets he was trying to sell me and said, "American. You see? American.' It was like, he approved. Like I was some kind of Ambassador for America--no longer Iraq, no longer the Ugly American. In other words, "James" was IN. And I very much liked this place the hand on the heart and bow thing, I do that anyway in Los Angeles sometimes: it was all making sense to me now.

"This carpet is for you. I see you sleeping on it at home. You are sleeping on it with your girlfriend."

"I broke up with my girlfriend before I came to India. She didn't like that I was writing another book. Or that I was off to India." I took another slug of the tea. I almost wept.

"This is you. This carpet. This is your new bed. And I can see you with your girlfriend, aha! She will love this carpet too. You will both sleep on it." He nodded to the boys, who smiled in approval.

"But I sleep on my Dad's old bed. It's from his old house. It's in this cottage in, um, California." I'm a terrible liar when I try. I didn't want to tell them I was from Florida, but I'd already given them my business card.

"More tea!" demanded Q.


(.... to be continued ....)

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Photos

Rascals of India
The Cast (not of the color and light show)

Rascals of India
Best Man

Gone Native?
I'm really an ALIEN