Because I had an aisle seat, I was required to take my turn at passing various items, from bundles to babies, backwards over the loaded aisle. The young farmer who passed the first item to me hesitated for a moment, staring into my grey eyes. When I wiggled my head from side to side, and smiled, he grinned in return and handed the bundle to me. By the time the bus rolled out of the busy terminal, I was accepting smiles and head-wiggles from every man in sight, and waggling and wiggling at them in return.
The sign behind the driver's head, in large red letters in Marathi and English, said that the bus was strictly licensed to seat forty-eight passengers. No-one seemed concerned that we were seventy passengers, and two or three tons of cargo. The old Bedford bus swayed on its exhausted springs like a tugboat in a storm tide. Creaks and groans and squeaks issued from the top, sides, and floor of the bus, and the brakes squealed alarmingly with every application. Nevertheless, when the bus left the city limits, the driver managed to crank it up to eighty or ninety kilometres per hour. Given the narrow road, the precipitous fall on the low side, the frequent columns of people and animals that lined the high side, the titanic mass of our swaying ark of a bus, and the vertiginous hostility with which the driver negotiated every curve, the speed was sufficient to relieve me of the need to sleep or relax on the ride.
During the following three hours of that perilous acceleration, we rose to the peak of a ridge of mountains marking the edge of a vast plateau, known as the Deccan, and descended once more to fertile plains within the rim of the plateau. With prayers of gratitude, and a new appreciation for the fragile gift of life, we left that first bus at a small, dusty, deserted stop that was marked only by a tattered flag flapping from the branch of a slender tree. Within an hour a second bus stopped.
"Gora kaun hain?" the driver asked, when we climbed aboard the step. Who's the white guy?
"Maza mitra ahey," Prabaker answered with contrived nonchalance, trying in vain to disguise his pride. He's my friend.
The exchange was in Marathi, the language of Maharashtra State, which has Bombay as its capital. I didn't understand much of it then, but the same questions and answers were repeated so often during those village months that I learned most of the phrases, with some variations, by heart.
"What's he doing here?"
"He's visiting my family."
"Where's he from?"
"New Zealand," Prabaker replied.
"New Zealand?"
"Yes. New Zealand. In Europe."
"Plenty of money in New Zealand?"
"Yes, yes. Plenty. They're all rich, white people there."
"Does he speak Marathi?"
"No."
"Hindi?"
"No. Only English."
"Only English?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They don't speak Hindi in his country."
"They don't speak Hindi there?"
"No."
"No Marathi? No Hindi?"
"No. Only English."
"Holy Father! The poor fool."
"Yes."
"How old is he?"
"Thirty."
"He looks older."
"They all do. All the Europeans look older and angrier than they really are. It's a white thing."
"Is he married?"
"No."
"Not married? Thirty, and not married? What's wrong with him?"
"He's European. A lot of them get married only when they're old."
"That's crazy."
"Yes."
"What job does he do?"
"He's a teacher."
"A teacher is good."
"Yes."
"Does he have a mother and a father?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
"In his native place. New Zealand."
"Why isn't he with them?"
"He's travelling. He's looking at the whole world."
"Why?"
"Europeans do that. They work for a while, and then they travel around, lonely, for a while, with no family, until they get old, and then they get married, and become very serious."
"That's crazy."
"Yes."
"He must be lonely, without his mummy and his daddy, and with no wife and children."
"Yes. But the Europeans don't mind. They get a lot of practice being lonely."
"He has a big strong body."
"Yes."
"A very strong body."
"Yes."
"Make sure you feed him properly, and give him plenty of milk."
"Yes."
"Buffalo milk."
"Yes, yes."
"And make sure he doesn't learn any bad words. Don't teach him any swearing. There are plenty of arseholes and bastards around who will teach him the wrong sisterfucking words. Keep him away from motherfuckers like that."
"I will."
"And don't let anyone take advantage of him. He doesn't look too bright. Keep an eye on him." "He's brighter than he looks, but yes, I will look after him."
