The dusty train wearily pulled into the railway station. The rushing gray blur slowly came into focus to became a slategray platform, and was instantly packed with a swarming hive of humanity. Porters in red uniforms, chai-wallahs with sooty black kettles in one hand and red-orange matkas in the other, and reedy boys hauling grimy thermocol iceboxes rushed into the train like pirates commandeering a three-Master. On the platform below roamed jaal-muri chefs balancing bags of puffed rice and varieties of spices in reused malt tins, and hawkers vending day-old newspapers in the curvaceous script of the local vernacular. The midday heat was oppressive; the air over the heads shimmered and shimmied. I pushed my way through the crowds blocking the carriage exit, stepped onto the platform and briskly moved away from the frantic eddies of commerce. Beckoning for a chai, I lit a cigarette and sucked deeply. I was beginning to feel myself again. I had been forewarned that the single-gauge locos on these remote routes often broke down and for long periods. Beside the platform ran a short wall with crudely stuck posters of local political parties and rail union factions; I leaned against it warily sniffing for any wafts of stale urine. So far the journey had been a waste. Twenty one days on the move and yet my journal lay untouched.
From the corner of my eye I noticed a flower girl, around ten, approaching me cautiously. In her arms was a large wicker basket with coils of jasmine, bunches of marigolds, and clusters of loose flowers.
"For the missus, sir?" she squeaked, offering me her basket.
"I am traveling alone," I replied, arching to blow the smoke away from her flowers.
My pidgin Hindi, that had miraculously survived my years in the US, was helping me get by on this journey. Her face fell. She turned and ambled towards the twisting orbs of humanity gathered at every entrance to the train. A brief flash of pink-white from her basket caught my eye.
"Wait! I will take a lotus," I shouted after her. She swiveled, and smiled.
The lotus. Kamala. Kamala Cafe. It came into my life when I least expected it; busy as I was smoking pot and chasing undergraduate girls. The idea gripped me, bewitched me, demented me. For four months I wrote, neglecting grades, personal hygiene, and diet. On Pepsi and pizza I wrote about that fantastical cafe in Ceylon where artists and socialites gathered for fine dining, exotic conversations, and illicit affairs. In unwashed slacks I wrote about the tuxedo-clad men and velvet-frocked women carousing and conspiring great mischief in the cafe's dance hall. Bunking classes and examinations I wrote about the occult symbols that appeared in its kitchen and the disappearances of journalists that went snooping. Ignoring friends and family I wrote about Kamala, my heroine, arriving at this eponymous cafe and getting swept into its whirlwind of mysteries behind a thin veneer of lively, yet comforting, stasis. The publishing was easy. The acclaim was universal. Copies flew off the shelves, and awards piled up in my tiny living room.
"The freshest voice in fiction...",
"An Indian voice shining through an international prism..."
"The normal and the abnormal twist and turn passionately in this dazzling debut..."
The book agents arrived unbeckoned, each advising to wait a different amount of time before publishing my next. The sophomore slump is crucial to avoid, they all said. Don't wait over two years, they all said.
Five years passed, and there had not been a second book. The litterateurs that had first turned green with envy, gradually went purple with rage, then orange with vindication, then white with sympathy, and finally colorless with disdain. The agents did not call anymore. Is it better to have had and lost than never had it at all? No.
"Reflecting self-harm tendencies...", "... uncharitable disposition towards self...", ran the shrink notes. Life became an amorphous blob; days merging with nights, faces merging with bodies, forced starvation merging with gluttonous food binges, extreme loneliness merging with drugged sexual escapades, until the phone rang one day and sympathetic voice from the distant past spoke into the dark recesses of my mind, "You need a change... take a trip... go back to India for a while... chase experiences..." That advise rang true where so many others had failed and I flew to India the next day.
India. Why didn't I think of it earlier? Like a window cracked open in a fetid room that invites in the afternoon sun, the thought of India swept inside my drug-addled mind and filled me with a cautious hope. Even when I flew out of India as a twelve year old, sitting in the middle seat between my parents, I knew my life would forever be tied to her tropical shores and untamed cultures. America, with her plastic gizmos and jingoistic fervors tries to engulf every pitiful Indian immigrant that lands on her shores, but pungent India always emerges from the cracks of the subconscious and reclaims her own. Graft an Indian out of India and eventually he will shed saps of India, bloom flowers of India, and bear the oversweet fruits of India. My amateurish short stories in high school were set in India. My first attempt at the novel, discarded after 40,000 words, was about an Indian searching for India in un-Indian places. Kamala Cafe was set in Ceylon, but its characters, occults, mysteries, and heroine were all taken from India. India, with her teeming masses, and uncountable stories would provide the story for my next book; that I hoped.
"Wild flower, sir. Very fragrant," the girl said, handing me an unfurled lotus from her basket.
"Does this grow around here?" I asked.
"Yes sir, in the pond near my village. Full of lotuses this time of year!"
"Can I see this pond?" I blurted before the oddness of the request became apparent. Kamala. Could it be a sign?
"It's half hour by bullock cart, sir. Ask for Ramdaspur village. You can get a cart outside the station else I can take you after I sell all my flowers," she mumbled, her eyes searching constantly for potential customers.
I felt an immense urge to see the wild lotuses in full bloom. The grumbling in the train had suggested the repairs would take all day. Many passengers had stepped out for a walk around town. I could safely be back in time to catch the train or worst case, take the next one; the station seemed busy enough. I picked up my backpack and went hunting for a cart.
"You want to go to Ramdaspur to see lotuses?" the buffalo cart driver eyed me suspiciously.
"Yes."
"Why? You don't have lotuses where you come from?"
"We do, but not much."
"Your accent is weird. Where are you from?"
"Doesn't concern you."
He grumbled in his local tongue, and said, "Rs. 200. I won't get a fare back from that shit-place."
"OK."
I knew I was being swindled; I hoped the lotuses would be worth it.
The ride was bumpy. After his initial interrogation, my driver went silent chewing a stalk of grass. We left behind the trappings of what had seemed a small town and entered into densely cultivated fields. After a long, drowsy ride, a dot on the horizon slowly became a small cluster of mud-brick homes.
"Ramdaspur," my driver stated, grabbed the cash from my hand and didn't even wait for me to disembark before turning the cart around. Only after he had retreated beyond calling distance that I realized I may not find another cart from this remote village.
I turned towards the mud homes. The village seemed empty, the men presumably away at their fields. Some faces peeked from doorways and some windows were quickly shut. A dirty boy in tattered briefs emerged from one of the homes and began speaking in his language, gesturing with his hands towards the direction I had come from.
"I have come to see your pond," I said in my slow Hindi which the boy didn't seem to understand.
"Pond. Water," I said gesturing the universal symbol of a drink to convey my search for the village pond.
The boy grunted, went back inside, and emerged with an earthen vessel with some water that had some stuff floating in it. I eyed the water uneasily; afraid of offending him by refusing this first hospitable gesture. Remembering the flower the girl sold me, I took it out from my pocket and held it to the boy.
"Lotus. Kamal. I want to see the lotuses."
Recognition dawned on his face and he gestured towards the other end of the village, down the single street that wound through it. The road led past the village and into a densely wooded cluster of trees that remained cool and dark even in the midday sun. Within this cluster emerged the small pond. Despite the shade, the thirsty sun had managed to lap up most of its water, what remained was covered – nay, infested – with lotuses. Layers upon layers of the green leaves spread over every inch of the pond, pockmarked occasionally with the most delicate pink-white blooms. I felt hugged by a gentle breeze carrying the heady smells of the flowers and the surrounding vegetation. A few squirrels scurried down from their tree-homes and began lapping around me. From one end of the woods a wave of cawing picked up. Whenever the breeze briefly blowed, the flowers would gracefully glide back and forth on their watery stage putting on a dance. It was a place of incredible beauty – an oasis of small delights amidst a burning world.
The lotus. Kamal. The Indian obsession with this flower is legendary. When all similes failed at capturing the ethereal beauty of Krishna's eyes or Sita's lips, the ancient bards turned to the humble lotus. When confronted with the daunting challenge of demonstrating detached attachment, a cornerstone of their philosophy, the Vedic philosophers pointed at the lotus and the water on its leaves.
"Do you like the flowers?"
The Hindi sentence snapped me out of my reveries. I noticed an old man with a flowing white beard in a clean kurta standing behind me.
"Yes. They are beautiful."
"We don't get many visitors in our village, especially to see our flowers," he smiled revealing several missing teeth. I presumed the boy had informed him about the village's strange visitor on his stranger quest.
"My train broke down at the town station. I was told the lotuses here are beautiful. I thought I'll make a trip of it."
"Our lotuses are the most beautiful. Where have you come from?"
"America."
"America?" his eyes widened in shock. Even in surprise his demeanor retained an affability that instantly put me to ease. "What brought you to our country?"
"Just traveling. I am a writer. I am searching for ideas for my next book. "
"Did you find any?" he asked with a glint in his eye.
"Not really," I paused for a bit and continued, "it has been a while since I wrote anything. I thought your lotuses might help me write again." My honesty puzzled me. Perhaps the thought that I would never meet this man again allowed me to shed my usual filters.
"If all you needed was a lotus to write your next book, you need not have come all this way. The lotus is everywhere," he smiled.
I returned his smile, not caring to explain that not every part of the world was tropical.
"You don't believe me? What is Lord Krishna's eye? A lotus. Where is God? He is everywhere. Ergo the lotus is everywhere," the man burst into halting laughter at his own wisecrack.
"Do you know who planted these lotuses?" I asked, hastily seeking to avoid a sermon.
"The lotuses were here before we came, and they will be here long after we are gone. They can survive through anything, even humans. Do you know? Every year each plant sheds thousands of seeds to the bottom of the pond. Most get eaten by fishes, providing life to so many. The few that remain wait patiently for the right time to germinate. Some wait for days, some for months, and some for years. A few even wait a thousand years. Why does one seed wait so long while others sprouted earlier? Because it knew that what was right for others was not right for itself. Why rush, it asked."
He walked up to a tree and sat on a large, raised root, beckoning me to sit beside him. I walked up to him and sat on a rock by the tree.
He continued, "When one seed didn't germinate for so long, while all of its siblings did, did it ever question its location? Did it pick up and travel all over the world to find a better place to germinate? No. It remained where it was, knowing that its time will come. Only a restless mind expects solace in movement. The lotus is calm."
"It is a lotus's nature to wait and germinate. Perhaps it is not my nature to write, which is why I couldn't do it in America," I interjected.
"Maybe. No matter how hard it tries a lotus cannot any more of a lily and equally it cannot become any less of a lotus. If you are a writer, you cannot stop from being one even if it takes a long time to germinate. Why the rush?" he asked smiling.
Both of us sat in silence for a few minutes. The breeze picked up again and brought with it the smells of dung and cooking from the village. Unbeknownst a tear rolled down my cheek. My tummy began to grumble at the smell of food. I remembered the train at the station. I stood up and bid adieu to the old man asking whether he would walk with me back to the village.
"I will stay awhile with the lotuses. Farewell, my friend," he smiled.
Back at the village it seemed as desolate as before. I began walking towards the town braving the searing sun. The sun beat me into a pulp and I felt myself going dizzy. Suddenly a dot emerged from the distance and progressively grew larger until I could make out the faint outlines of the horns of buffalos surrounded by a halo of dirt kicked up by their trodding feet – it was a buffalo cart! Soon I realized it was the same cart that had dropped me off at the village. Seeing me, the driver yanked the beasts to stop.
"I thought you may not find another cart to come back. I thought I will come and check, but it will cost Rs. 300, sahib," the driver said.
Handing him a 500 rupee note, I jumped onto his cart unable to control my smile and said, "Keep the change."
Beaming with happiness, the driver turned around the animals and began riding back towards town, "My name is Kamal Jeet, sahib. What's yours?"
I broke into a smile. Perhaps the old man was right – the lotus is everywhere.
