After chartering five weeks on the dusty road, there had been many a unique character that I will never forget. In all humour and the spirit of adventure, allow me to introduce to you:
Mootu, the one-eyed dog, who never gave up a long dry trek through the Khuri Desert. He came out of nowhere as we passed Devraji’s village in Jaisalmer, and he followed us through the afternoon, running ahead as we looked hard to find the giant Acacia tree to cook lunch and rest away the day’s heat. We gave him some dal and chapatti. We all ate pleasantly and took our siesta very seriously. As the sun hit the lower meridian, Mootu took off to lead our camels towards the sand dunes where we would camp for the night under the open sky.
That night, he guarded our surroundings by chasing after every negligent fox that came too close for comfort. All Mootu asked from me was acknowledgement and a scratch on his dog-fight bitten ears. In the morning, he was warmly curled up in a pit he dug himself, while we set up our camels for the ride home. As we passed by his village again, Mootu ran off, only to look back three times at us. Tailed straightly erected with a sense of purpose and belonging, Mootu bade a final goodbye as he tracked back to his village and I struggled to sense his whereabouts as Mootu dashed in and out of bushes and thickets. It felt weird to have him following me by my camel the whole of yesterday and until this morning, to so quickly have the umbilical attachment cut off without warning.
Then suddenly, I saw a glimpse of Mootu, in the far away parched field, proudly telling me that it was okay and that we accepted what we were given, as was the rule of the land in the desert.
B. S. Sodha, the proud and loud guide within the Jaisalmer Fort’s Palace. As other guides would attest, essential knowledge would be the fastest route to earning from and learning about foreigners like us. Not only he enthralled us with his camel love story (which led to the belief that the camel represents love in Rajasthan, famously told many times by the actions of a prince that took to his nightly stalking of a princess that lived near the ancient city of Nargaur, while his wife slept unknowingly back in where modern day Pakistan was) he seemed to tell a darn good tale backed by an even more entertaining volume of voice. Case in point we could tell that he must had been extremely proud of his past Maharaja when we ran past the genealogy when we saw other fellow visitors with their audio guide covering their ears, giving us dirty glances when Sodha culminated his story with beaming pride, pigeon-chested and a tenor tone to sing the praises of their proud emperors (long gone buried in the safety of their cenotaphs).
Kanu Swami, an artist of utmost talent. I spent a great few hours to admire his work and watch him guide the fine single hair brush across the painting of an eagle, more impressionist than classical portrayal of the magnificent creature in the desert plains. The oddity came when I was asking (and learning) about painting done on camel bones. Perhaps in between the crude exchange of language, me being completely painfully hopeless in Hindi and his smattering of English, he raised his index finger and loudly declared that he had “exactly what I was looking for” in his private collection of camel bone art done in six pieces of ravishingly painted pictorial of… wait for it… the Kama Sutra. Not wanting to sound like a prude, I held those pieces of art (they were beautifully articulated, no details were too small nor too big (ahem, no pun) to paint accurately) and pretended that I was looking at them as I would a Sufi painting. My brains were running a quick mental research of what was the most socially accepted and etiquette-wise graceful way of exiting this awkward situation for me without offending my enthusiastic painter, and I had no answer to the best number of seconds I should paused between the “module of the peacock (no pun) orgasmic obtainment” to the “module of pinches and kisses”. Too much detail before dinner perhaps?
Rest assured I went home with miniature depiction of Rajasthani tiger hunts, thank you very much.
Which leads us to the grand finale of the ultimate sacrifice of a learner of the unknown, my first encounter with a masseuse en route to Pushkar.
Although we slept fairly in most places, there was the one or two tight knots on the shoulders and I, in the spirit of “why not?” that I had learned from my fellow Indians, decided to risk where no man had gone, and called for a room massage. Apparently this lady was skilled in the fine art of a “Kerala” massage. Knowing next to nothing but not expecting it to come any close to the ones I had enjoyed in Thailand and Indonesia, I happily waited for the hours to pass before I succumb like a melting pad of butter under the warm loving hands of my masseuse.
And was I glad that I had my hubby with me in the room.
She turned out to be a chef that graduated from the school of beating out naan bread. I didn’t think she was a masseuse, least one skilled in the Ayurvedic healing massages. I tried to rally with her, I tried to bear the pain, I tried to hold on and prove that we puny Southeast Asian travelers could withstand the crushing might of the Rajasthani women (in hindsight I had no idea what I was trying to prove!) and above all, with nothing but my tiny little brief offering me the barest physical protection from her hands with fingers that resembled giant overfed caterpillars, I closed my eyes and whispered that 40 minutes will pass on soon enough.
Ten minutes into the gig, I could ask for a bag to store the powdered teeth that resulted from too much grinding, and she even had the cheek to switch on the television! Hubby told her “no television” and I thought she probably took it out on me. Smelling of chopped raw onions, she proceeded to slapped down my body on the mattress, giving no hole out for my nose to inhale precious oxygen to fight the onslaught. A few ugly squirts of oil (that were supposed to hold herbal goodness), she began to rub my back like how my over-eager aunt would marinate a fattened duck for the festival dinner. Between gasping for air as my face bounced rhythmically off and on the mattress, I found that I had to often remind myself to release my clenched fists. Even my toes were getting cramps from curling too much. In short, my massage was a date in hell, poured with kerosene and with the Devil himself poking his prong at my ass. I would had readily knelt down to ask for deliverance but my massage was only 15 minutes into the process!
As the minutes agonizingly crawled to the next, she topped the routine by emptying the bottle of oil on my head and proceeded to rolling me in between her hands. I felt like I was being used as an exercise prop for her biceps and as she pushed down my lower back from where she was standing (in front of my head), being amply blessed on the mammary glands department, I felt (again) in all generosity, the full impact of two huge gulab jamun, in their operatic bigness upon my skull. It was like a boxer doing his round of punches on the reflex ball, except that my head was the poor latter and her breasts were drilling down me, made worse by her coned bras that would turn Madonna in her “Like a virgin” days to shame and blush.
In the end, she asked me to turn over and I ungracefully made the move like a fish on its tail end of life, or whatever was left in it. Now, if previously I felt vulnerable, then I truly felt sheer fright. She began to speed up crushing my joints and almost dislocating my toes in the move of plucking out lady’s fingers for dinner. There was absolutely nothing relaxing about this entire session and I never realized that 40 minutes could be a lifetime of torture under the wrong hands.
As she culminated her treatment with smashing my face and rearranging (luckily unsuccessfully) my eyes with my lips and nose, interspersed with some weird smelling facial cream, I was almost asphyxiating from the lack of fresh air in between fighting for a clear hole from the top assault of her boobies and the onion smells from her armpits. I was still hanging on and in a strange way, I felt really proud of myself!
Something was seriously going wrong with my head but nonetheless, I went overdrive on positivity and told myself that this too, would pass. Only that I should had said my prayers earlier and hoped much, much later.
Two dark shadows came swooping down at my unsuspecting thoracic region and I felt her utilizing the ultimate chapatti kneading motion with my girls. Then with a gasp (from my part) and her satisfied slap on her hand, she announced the therapeutic massage was complete. It was 30 minutes.
I had lost all massage dignity in that time.
