In Dehra Dun, we walk past a line of repairmen, all seated neatly one after the next along the sidewalk. One man is the umbrella repairman. He sits with a paintbucket full of salvaged umbrella parts, patiently working at the ribs of a frail umbrella--one that will break again next week. One that cost at most $1.50, new.
In Mussoorie, I am alone. The entrance to the Hotel Laxmi Palace is grand: marble floors and sparkle and high ceilings, and the whole thing juts off the edge of a cliff. My room is tiny, smudged. A constellation of cigarette burns decorates the wall. The four-inch gap between the bed and the wall is littered with cigarette butts, matts of hair, greasy plastic bags. I turn back the blanket to find a cockroach in its death throes. I fall asleep to the sound of the leaky faucet, tightly cocooned in the sheet I so thankfully brought with me to India. I am already missing John.
I came to Mussoorie to see the mountains--I emerge the next morning into cloud. A man helps me to find an ATM. He then decides that he was my friend, although he can't speak English worth a damn. He does not ask my name; I never ask his--so for simplicity's sake, I'll call him Stupid. Excerpts from our conversation:
"I am married!" I am brandishing my (faux) wedding ring.
"I married too." Pause. "You no married.... please, one coffee?"
"I am married! And no!"
"You no like coffee?"
"I like coffee! I don't like you!"
"No smoke, no coffee, no chai.... you are confused?"
"Not confused! I am angry!"
"You confused? I go back?"
"Not confused! Yes, you go back!"
He brightens. "Not confused? I go bus stand, then I go back."
"No! You go back now!" I stop walking, start gesticulating wildly in the direction I am not headed. I am drawing stares. "Go now! I don't like you!"
"You like me? I like you."
It is impossible.
Walking with fury I cover the mile and a half in record time. Stupid tails me. He boards the bus with me. I do not make room for him to sit next to me. Ridiculously, he buys my bus ticket. I am pleading with the conductor not to accept the money, but I am slower with my wallet, and the man is confused. I am nearly in tears. The man in the seat ahead of me, observing the drama, asks me if I know Stupid. I say no. He asks if I want help--I say yes. He says that if something happens more, he will help.
Calm comes slowly. I think to myself: I do not know my stalker; he does not know me. Better--Stupid does not exist. I do nothing more to acknowledge his existence.
Amazingly, Stupid stays on the bus. He will go to Dehra Dun--a direct, 1-hour bus ride from Mussoorie. By this new route, it will be 8 hours and 3 buses before he arrives. My protector sits in front of me. And I got a free bus ticket. Stupid is taking a dusty, 8-hour journey to be pressed into oblivion by a foreign woman whose name he has not bothered to ask.
We descend through the mountains, passing through white pine, hemlock, weeping willows, apple--rain and fog and dappled sunlight. We pass a construction sight where four men have taken refuge from the rain inside the mouth of a bulldozer.
I disembark alone into Rishikesh dusk. My spirits are high. Cars careen blaringly by. Om sweet Om, as they say.....
