It’s true.
Some of the Nepalis have been dealing their charas down here. They bring it from the mountains every season, one hundred tolas in total. Perfect mountain charas. Sticky and green, wrapped in cellophane. They sell it from the shack itself, take the order with the food order, it’s the system: the customer orders the “special mountain sizzler,” a dish not on the menu. They pay for it with their food bill, it’s there on the receipt with the other dishes. The charas is passed to the customer in one of the little wooden receipt boxes along with their change. It’s a good system. The landlord takes his cut, as do the police. But some of the boys are greedy, they deal on the beach alone too, without protection, and some deal in other bars and on the back roads at night. One day one of the boys is found dead in the jungle, tied to a tree, a rag in his mouth, his hands cut off.
He is cremated. It’s forgotten.
It’s never forgotten.
The boys, fraying at the edges, live quietly like there’s no tomorrow. Some of them have foreign girlfriends, girls they meet in the café, get friendly with, give drugs to, take out to spots in the jungle or on motorbikes to waterfalls far inland, show them hidden places, looking for that long-shot promise—“I’ll sponsor your visa, come live with me.” The boys encourage Ajay to find a girl. What is he waiting for? He has enough admirers. The girls often ask about him. But he’s too shy; he recoils. He cannot conceive of it, his own body terrifies him, his own needs. He likes to set himself within limits; those limits keep him strong. He sleeps curled up on the beach, spooning the beach dogs that are drawn to his gentleness and the scent of mutual need.
He builds a fantasy: He will return home to take his mother and sister away. He’ll arrive in a car of his own, a driver in front, he sitting behind, and they’ll all weep when he touches his mother’s feet. And the whole village will rejoice.
7.
It might have gone on like this forever, a life deferred, if it weren’t for the sudden appearance of Sunny Wadia. He arrives when Ajay has gone back to the mountains, returned from Goa to Purple Haze for the summer season of 2001.
Sunny is the leader of a small band of revelers, Indians who live like the foreigners, still something of a rarity in those days. Who live like the foreigners but who are not like the foreigners at all, four men and one woman, something dangerously new and bold; young, rich, and glamorous Indians, not afraid to show it, not afraid to slum it, welcome everywhere, welcomed by themselves. Travelers for whom authenticity is not a question, content to sit in the cafés with the foreigners and smoke chillum and eat their backpacker food, who arrived in big, shiny cars without scratches instead of buses and bikes and wore good clothing and stayed in the best new hotels in the village, ones with bright pine balconies and expensive bars.
Ajay has never encountered Indians like this. In no time this small group seems to take over the village. Shopkeepers are sending packages and parcels of goods to their hotel. Drivers are loitering, itching to serve, waiting to take them on tours, take them to parties so they don’t have to drive themselves. And unlike the foreigners, who count every rupee, money is no object for this new group, money is nothing to be concerned with, there’s no virtue in penny-pinching. They spend. They want their comforts; they make no romance out of misery. Word of their big spending and the high tips that go with it spreads. The economy of the village is redirected their way. All the workers want a piece of them, all the villagers want a piece of them. Everyone vies for their favor. But some of the foreigners begin to grumble. These Indians, some say, don’t understand their own culture; they have been infected by the West. It’s a sad sign, how they’ve lost their way.
But the boys in Purple Haze fall into animated discussion whenever they see them, analyzing this group’s activities in great detail. Five of them! So glamorous. The men so handsome and rich. And one woman with the men! Who is she married to? Whose girlfriend is she? How is it possible? Where do you think they’re from? Chandigarh, Delhi, Bombay? Someone decides the woman is a famous actress. Someone thinks there’s a cricket player among them. These Indians sit in the cafés smoking charas every day, paying without hesitation for Malana Cream. They swallow up the places they go, they invade them, colonize them, move on. Money does that. They want the walnut cake here. They want the banana crepes there. They like this stroganoff. They order dishes from one café to be delivered while they sit in the next. They sit in Purple Haze and order dishes from MoonBeam.
“You have no respect,” a voice says. It’s a Spanish woman, rake thin and wrinkle tanned, in her forties, smoking a cigarette, sitting across the café, picking a fight with them. “You cannot just do like this,” she goes on. She is waving her arms at them, worked up. “Doing like this is not right.” She points to the owner. “He make his food.” She points to her own dish. “And you bring in like that. You have no shame.”
They watch, bemused, and begin to joke in Hindi. “Listen to this chutiya . . . Bitch is crazy.”
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she yells. “Don’t you talk about me.”
“Ma’am,” one of the group chimes in, speaking languid, London-tinged English. “With all due respect, if you learned the language of this country, you’d know we weren’t talking about you.”
“Don’t give me your bullshit,” she says, jabbing her cigarette his way. “I’ve seen you walking around here.”
“Ma’am, there’s no need for foul language,” Sunny says with a faux earnest expression that makes his friends burst into giggles. In Hindi comes the muttered aside: “She’s a psycho,” and they laugh even more.
“Fuck you,” she says. “You come here with your money and your big cars and think you can do anything you like, that you can order everyone around. You have your money, but you lost your culture.”
The group explodes with laughter.
But the young man’s mood darkens.
“Madam,” he replies. “Don’t tell us about our culture. We’re not zoo animals for your pleasure, not the smiling native to accessorize your enlightenment. The simplicity and honesty you think you know is simply your eyes deceiving your brain. You see and hear nothing. And this guy,” he says, pointing to the owner, “doesn’t give a fuck if we bring food from outside. We paid him for that privilege. If you could speak our language, you’d know this. If you knew our culture, you’d know respect is one currency, but at the end of the day, money talks. Finally, understand this one thing. India is our country, not yours. You are guests here. We are great hosts, but don’t disrespect us in our own home.”
* * *