I started stirring around 3.30am and couldn’t drift back to
sleep, so I spent a while writing, before finally falling for a few more hours.
I awoke to the sound of a tea seller screaming ‘Chai’ in my dozy face, I bought
a cup because I was shit-scared he would come do it again if I didn’t.
We arrived in Varanasi two hours late, at 9.30am, with light
rain falling on our faces. A (p)rickshaw driver dropped us about ten minutes
further away from the area that our guesthouse was in, and we struggled with
our heavy loads up various wrong roads, until we were put in the right
direction.
After navigating many narrow alley-ways filled with
un-claimed cows, stray dogs, half naked gurus, small shops and wall to wall
filth, we made it to the Modern Vision Guesthouse, and chose the room which had
a king-size ‘bed’ (in the loosest sense of the word, more of a wooden bench
with a two-inch mat on top), a view of the Ganges from the window, and access
to a roof terrace with a stunning view of the city.
We hit the local alleys in order to find a recommended
clothes shop and tailor called Baba Handicraft, so I could get my new tunic
taken in and buy some Ali Baba trousers. They said they couldn’t replicate some
other shirts that I had intended to get made, so I found somewhere else to do
it for me, and bargained a great deal on three copies of a t-shirt, and four of
my favourite granddad shirt. Under £35 all in, about the amount I paid for the
original shirt. BOOM!
It started raining hard. The kind of rain that the sea would
run away from, to save itself spilling off the edge of the Earth. Turns out it
wasn’t a monsoon as first thought, as it didn’t stop shortly after starting,
this was a cyclone, and we were right in the middle of that crazy unforgiving
bastard.
In nothing but lightweight clothes we ran through the
streets in search of shelter, and dived into the first restaurant found, around
5pm. Just our luck, it was an outdoor joint, but they had roofed side sections
with pillows to relax on. We sat there for a few hours, eating, drinking and
talking conspiracy theories. I told her about my old work colleague, a black
dude named Mark Brown who believed that all Chinese people were aliens, “All
eye-witness descriptions of them are the same, flat faces, slanted eyes and big
heads”. I think he was describing the aliens. I also told her my ‘radical’
views on the 9/11 and 7/7 ‘terrorist’ attacks, the subsequent control by fear,
and the inconsistencies surrounding the government’s recollection of events.
She found it hard to swallow, which is exactly what all believers and
non-believers alike think, after-all, who could happily choose to accept that a
government would murder its own people (unless you watch the news or read into
history, and see that it actually happens all across the world)?
After growing tired of waiting for the rain to stop, we
decided to make a run for it. I was hoping to stay as dry as possible, but
after my foot sploshed in its first puddle all bets were off. I’ve been
training myself to love the things I hate for a while now, one of which is the
rain, and I’ve recently been taking off my jacket whenever I get caught out in
it. I wasn’t wearing a jacket, so I pulled off my shirt and took the most
liberating fifteen minute walk of my life, laughing, singing and having banter
with all the interested Indians that passed by. Every cold, heavy drop that hit
my back was a step away from hate and towards love, until I was so enamoured
with Mother Earth’s new delivery to me that I could’ve stayed out their dancing
all night. The kids loved it, and there were many men cracking smiles, in
amongst the confused and concerned. We
arrived back at our room and had shower of the day, number three.
The rain wasn’t letting up, and thunder roared all
around us, like anger from the belly of the beast, awoken with a flame to its
face. In a moment of sexual genius, we snuck out of our room and onto the roof,
pulling each other’s clothes off in frenzy and becoming one, once again. The
feeling of the rain hitting my back as we writhed in ecstasy was pure bliss,
every kiss bringing us closer to climax as we did the most natural action that
lovers can, in the most natural habitat known to man, lightening frequently
lighting the outline of her beautiful body as it danced in the darkness. She
screamed in delight as I stared across the city, water washing away our sins
before we could commit them, and we finished with a final kiss before floating
back downstairs. Shower of the day number four saw us sleep soon after.
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