The End?

Well, so ends my account of the Andaman Islands, and yes, so too ends my account of India. I've been thinking about what to say in this post for a long time. Do I try and sum up some inner wisdom I've gained? Do I try to encapsulate the Indian spirit in a few paragraphs of cheeky prose? Do I just say "Fuck all y'all! I'm GFB! Peace!" ? Do I concoct some elaborate bookending narrative. I started and stopped on a few different conceits for Ghostface Buddha's Last Post From India over the past few weeks, only to find that they were all too limited... I wanted to write everything. "Everything" wasn't happening. Some of it felt redundant. I already wrote my summary of the Indian experience. I've already expounded all the critical observations I have to share. On the other hand, I had about twenty closing lines of various types, some of them good, some of them massively inadequate, and all of them jostling in my mind to clinch that single moment at the bottom of this post. Then, just last night as I pondered my fading Indian moments in a shabby Chennai hotel block, it hit me: I don't have to settle on just one. So, my friends, here are not one, but several endings to GFB's Indian odyssey. It's like a DVD! Alternate endings.... that is, if the "endings" are really endings...

....................................................

My neck cracked as I hunched over the map, its wrinkled and watersplotched surface straining to reveal a sign. I needed one desperately. "God damn.... I've been everywhere in this dump" I muttered to myself. I scanned the printed Asian names with the eye of a batty old woman looking over a middle-school yearbook with a magnifying glass, trying to determine which snotty-nosed little shit she had seen in the back of the Hendersons' yard taunting the cats. Rajkot: seen it. Uttarkashi: been there. Tambaram: the name rings a bell. I despaired of finding a new place to roam, when suddenly the low afternoon sun glinting off the mirror of a rickshaw blasted through my window like the very laser engraver God himself used to score the tragically lost fine print on the Ten Commandments. A wisp of smoke began rising from the corner of the page, and there in the massive expanses beyond the Himalayas I caught sight of a single word, a mere five characters of striking bold text in length.

C......H.......I.......N........A

I froze. A sudden sense of certainty held me. I did not feel seized or taken. Rather, this pure, uninhibited knowledge swelled from within. Regaining my senses, I glanced back down at the map, where China lay beckoning, curling a long, opium-stained fingernail towards me, sensually reciting the many industrial virtues of the People's Republic, and all was clear.

"Well, fuck that shit. PEACE"

...................................................

India does not want me to leave. I've decided half the people just desperately want me to stay, and the other half want to detain me here as a form of punishment. I imagine the divide runs straight down the gender line. In any case, it was a man who tried to fuck me over at the Chennai airport. Now, I am willing to admit I was cutting things a bit close with a lateish arrival to the international departures lobby, but what followed was inexcusable.

Up walks some fancy-looking idiot from Kingfisher Airlines, informing me that he can not allow me to claim my boarding pass. "Oh, and why not?" I rightly wondered. He told me that I was late. I felt that in India of all places, where people sometimes won't even get onto an empty bus until three times its capacity try to board it in motion as it roars out of the station, getting to the airport an hour before the flight out to be fine. But no. Nooooooooooo. I was there only fifty minutes early, and ticketing closes an hour before departure.

"Sir, it is 12:00. Ticketing closed at 11:50"

I realized this was no time to express my immediate reaction, which was "So fucking what?" and instead tried to feign surprise and outrage, and while the outrage was genuine, the feigned surprise I fear was overshadowed by the boiling hot tones of contempt I felt dribbling out of my speech. This man believed I was trying to be special. I thought he was being a tool. I attempted reasoning. "Yes, sir, I understand, you cannot keep a plane waiting for one man, but there is almost an hour left. The plane is there. I simply find it unreasonable you do not allow me to try and reach my flight, even if I must be rushed." That, of course, is how airports work in sensible places, but this is India, and India has Indian beaurocracy, and The Rules Are The Rules. I even tried philosophizing, getting him to appreciate the reason the rules are in place (to discourage tardiness and delays), and how they applied to the situation, but found it was impossible to do so without making blistering remarks about the Indian timekeeping psyche and bit my lip.("Well in some countries we have the sense to time our own arrival at airports, for ur own sake, and staff try to help when we face the disaster of missing a flight rather than beating us over the head with a stopwatch and a clown noses, making us sit on our hands while the jungle slowly reclaims the terminal until vines clog the customs desk and monkeys are to be found fornicating in the luggage scanners, all because 'ticketing closes at 11:50' ")

Somehow I prevailed upon him to just take my damn luggage after having him lecture me like a schoolboy turning in a late essay. "Do you think it's fair, sir? Do you think all these people who were here before should have come now instead?" My silence was burning me, but the visions of having to deal with some other dunce at the Immigration ministry in a few days to explain why I'd overstayed my visa kept the rage barely contained inside.

Now, unbeknownst to me, but certainly known to Chickenshit over here, the flight I was aiming for was delayed. The plane was not even in India yet when he was trying to send me away for tardiness. That hypocritical, lying, half-wit weasel shagger....

But I was to have my revenge. Oh yes, sir.

He led me to where my boarding pass was to be printed and started discussing something with his assistant, looking much concerned about seating arrangements. The assistant seemed to find a solution immediately, but he looked deeply pained. Finally, because The Rules Are The Rules, he was forced to surrender.

"Sir, because you are late there is a seating assignment problem, and we must accommodate you in... First Class."

Oh, you mean the First Class where the delectable stewardesses assume I'm a First Class paying customer and treat me to all the enormous seats, silly perks and gourmet cuisine received by the legitimate bigwigs? That First Class? BWAAAAHAHAHHAHAHHA

Nice try, India. You almost got me good there.

Hey, India......

SUCK
MY
DICK

PEACE
......................................

"Hey, cows" I said.

"Moooooooooooooooo?" 280 million cretinous mounds of ambling fertilizer factories asked in unison.

"Guess what?"

The pitiable cheesebeasts hazarded a guess. "Muuuoo?"

 "Nope.....what I was going to say was...... I WIN. FUCK ALL Y'ALL. PEACE."

......................................

The time had come at last. Girlface Buddha and I faced off in the Chennai airport. My flight was finally being called for boarding. Her flight back to the northwest left in another three hours. After many travails, shared joys, and shared miseries, it might now be our final parting. No more hobbling down Himalayan slopes in the snow together. No more coordinating pincer-strike blitzkriegs against sari-nibbling insects in jungle huts together. No more clambering down muddy mountainsides to retrieve luggage launched from bouncing jeep roofs together. I was leaving more behind than a beautiful country and its miscreant cattle.

I almost didn't mention this because it's a wee bit personal, but y'all might have got confused if Girlface suddenly diappeared from the pages of this blog. But like I said....endings might not be endings, and all I can say is there is a chance we shall all be hearing from her again. And since endings might not be endings, it bears repeating what many have said before: that an ending is just the bit before a new beginning.

And it is with that thought that I would like to announce a certain "new beginning".

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now reading the very first lines of....

Ghostface Buddha: Sri Lanka

SUCK
MY
DICK

PEACE