Миша Чинков - Кауч

Rudra drives home while I take a subway to center to do some sightseeing and get a sim card. On the one hand, I’m pretty grateful to Rudra for the help. On the other – I’m freaking out without him. On bazaar, I’m being fucked up at every corner: sim card, currency exchange, train tickets. I manage to activate the card by a couple call to the chief, local cronies help with an adequate exchange rate. Train tickets were a bit of a scam: I would learn in a week I bought them for twice the price. Still not that expensive.

On top of all cultural shock related stuff, I got a food poisoning in Bishkek. With a crazy look in my eyes, I rush through the bazaar seeking a toilet – you won’t even find one in McDonald's! Balancing on the edge between the permissible and the impermissible, I run into a local temple and as luck would have it I find a functioning public toilet. Religion saved my life in the end.

[WhatsApp chat]

– [Rudra]: Hey, brother. Call me when you’re there. I’m waiting.

– [Rudra]: Where are you?

– [Rudra]: Misha, do you have a sim card? Brother, send me a message, if it’s all right, where are you, I’m a bit worried about you.

– [Me]: Good, I’ve just come home. I’ve got Vodafone sim card. The guy told me it would be activated in 4 hours, but the Internet still doesn’t work.

– [Rudra]: Okey, thanks god, you’re finally back. I’ve thought, you know, no message, no answer. Sorry, just sim card problems. How was your day?

– [Me]: There’s so much I’d like to tell. Let’s talk about it when you come.

– [Rudra]: Have you eaten something for dinner?

– [Rudra]: A juice, thanks. My stomach needs some rest.

– [Rudra]: Well, fine, fine, take care, sleep well. I won’t be home today because I have an important work to do here, sorry about that, call me when your number is activated.

New Delhi is a town of crowds and jostles. I can hardly understand how people live here. Jostle at a metro entrance, jostle at a metro exit, jostle in a car wagon, jostle at the stall with alcohol, jostle at a praying room in the temple. Even metro's one-minute interval is still not enough for a comfortable ride. Given the Moscow-scale distances, an hour ride turns into torture.

At some point, I lose it, thinking over all possible and impossible ways to escape this flophouse. Soon, I accidentally meet two guys from England and Australia. We pass round a blunt and life becomes more tolerable.

The city is taking a new look. No longer see I any jostles, crooks or vile collectors in buses. Having eased off nuts where self-preservation instinct dwells, I enjoy summer weather and warm sunshine. I talk to the strangers I see, they are all friendliness and curiosity.

I think if countries were mental illnesses, India would be a “borderline personality disorder”.

Tour operators consider Taj Mahal to be the seventh, or like the eighths wonder of the world. The city of Agra – where it was built – lives off mass tourism. There is not much you can do about the human nature of going through check-lists set up by someone on the side.

Having fended off a couple weird guys in CouchSurfing with a massage offer, I finally find Yuvan – a guy nineteen years old. I can’t really say if he’s a student, a tour industry worker, or everything at once. The train from New Delhi to Agra is running for five hours instead of the scheduled three. I first see Agra late in the late evening darkness. The darkness warns me that I’m not going to see the Taj Mahal today – it’s closed half an hour before dawn. I see Yuvan driving up to the station on a motorbike.

We have dinner in a roadhouse with his brothers. Being rightfully local, Yuvan gives a couple lessons how to eat from a shared plate in the right way and how to hold a backpack at the table, so nobody can snitch it. One of his brothers invites me to stay over in his hotel. He’s acting pushy as fuck. On my third day here, I’m starting to get used to the way European look does the same to locals as a red flag to a bull. They’ll do whatever they can to sell you something, seeing no obstacles or borders. The guy is a real pain; besides, he’s breaking the first rule of the Russian etiquette: “When I dine, I’m deaf and blind”. The second brother doesn’t speak English and seems pretty quiet, thus winning my sympathy over the first one.

Yuvan suggest going to some hill in a village with a view on Taj Mahal. I agree with a picture in my head how I would draw this night to my friends: “Taj Mahal and night, and from afar, and with a local!”

Instead of Taj Mahal, we go to a five-star hotel where some local money bags celebrate a wedding. “I want to show you how I see India,” Yuvan tells me. The wedding is all about glamour and glitter: a buffet with cooks, nicely dressed guests, toilet paper in the bathroom and children's dances.

After the show, we go to a gas station, refill Yuvan’s bike with fuel and Yuvan’s stomach with booze. Yuvan is a born “flexer”: eloquent, talkative, energetic, no self-reflection – he goes with the flow, you know. It’s far from safe to be on the rear seat with a shit-faced guy, but the whirl of spontaneous events finally knocks down my self-preservation instinct. I let it go. That night, India was my youth, which forgives everything and promises nothing.

At some point, Yuvan meets his friend with two girls, so it makes five of us. After a dozen questions about our destination, Yuvan answered: “We go to the hotel to see Taj Mahal from the roof”.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Agra, a receptionist welcomes us in an empty hotel. He has a long talk with Yuvan and then gives a bunch of keys. We go upstairs. Yuvan opens two guest rooms wide. He enters one of them with the “girl number one”. I’m getting dragged to the other one by the “girl number two”.

All this surrealism gives me an odd feeling as if something was wrong. My father would tell me when I was a child: “Even cat's fuck has a reason”. I stay still and show the girl I want nothing from her. Yuvan eventually gives up on me being “pussy” and goes back to his lady. As for me, I go to the roof without sight of Taj Mahal whatsoever.

Yuvan finishes his business and invites everybody to his room. I’m sitting next to the “girl number two”. She doesn’t speak English and that makes any attempts to find out “Where? When? Why?” useless. I see some guy on her phone screen.

– [Me]: Is that your boyfriend?

– [the girl]: [ silently nods ]

We leave the hotel. Yuvan’s quiet brother is waiting for us at the entrance with a stern face. They are arguing about something. Shit hits the fan. A couple of minutes later, Yuvan turns to me and asks for money like we are bros.

– [Yuvan]: “The brother was supposed to pay for the hotel, but he’s kinda bitching about it. Now we need five thousand rupees to cover it. Be my bro, won’t you? I am your bro, bro, give me money, bro, I will give it back to the cent, bro”.

I make excuses since I understand I won’t see them back. Not that I have much money. On the one hand, it seems like the girl in the hotel should have become a legit part of the “blackmail” tourist program. On the other – I admit I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on.

We take a ride in his brothers’ car and stop at the ATMs we see on our way. Yuvan pretends he withdraws the money from his card and tells his bothers tales about technical problems. After an hour-long ride around Agra, I ask Yuvan to get me to the station. We get there after all, but Yuvan still follows my every step and asks to give him money.

3 p.m., crowded station. A group of ten lads sees us. One of them stands up for me and unloads a series of aggressive verbal punchlines at Yuvan. As a result, Yuvan disappears in the direction of his brothers’ car. That’s a nice relief for me: the story is over, I’m safe, and in a couple of hours I'll leave this fucking circus.

On my way to Jaipur, I read reviews to Yuvan’s couch profile and see familiar stories: about hotel wedding, about extortion. I think he must have sort of a long con aimed at tourists.

[Vedansh]: Hello, my friend. I will be glad to have you and show you the way to a good spiritual life with yoga and meditation”.

Jaipur city gives me vibes of hospitality, dignity and sincere affinity. Well, they are still all over you offering to buy some baubles, but it’s somehow kind, with smiling faces and no stress. I’m glad to be in “healthy India”.

These days, the country lives by Diwali. Diwali – the “festival of lights” – symbolizes the triumph of good over evil. To honor this victory, Indians light up candles and lamps all over the place. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a swastika as a solar symbol. Decorations are shining bright; pavement is covered with a red carpet. Noisy scooters are riding over the carpet, locals are hurrying somewhere.

[Vedansh]: “My address – h.no 305, lal ji sand ka rasta, choura rasta lal ji sand ka rasta, near Nawal book Depot. Take a tuk-tuk to chora rasta and there go to lal ji sand ka rasta, and there in lal ji sand ka rasta you’ll see Nawal book depot”.

I arrived to Nawal book depot, but I can’t reach Vedansh. I bother local guys and show them his photo – someone must know him. One of them helps me reach Vedansh and then shows the way to his home. Vedansh welcomes me open-armed. He’s sitting on his home floor, accompanied by Olivia from Australia. I join their get-together and get a joint to welcome company.

– [Olivia]: Dude, you’re so weird, I think you’re stoned.

– [Me]: Guys, I slept two hours last night on a car wagon seat.

Vedansh draws good deeds with an artist’s brush. He gets by selling his crafts to tourists. He makes an impression of a common spiritual Indian: tranquility, yoga, meditation. Again and again his speech slips with worldly wisdom.

[Vedansh]: “The first rule of life – no expectations. Expectations are useless”.

Next morning we walk outside for a breakfast. At breakfast, Vedansh tells us that life in Jaipur is great because nobody cares how much you earn and how much you have in your pocket now. Within four years our lost planet would bear a pandemic, Vedansh would lose his source of income and beg his white Facebook friends for a donation.

But at the moment, I’m sincerely touched by his tales about no-income life.

One can sincerely love Mumbai, hate it with all his or her heart, but ignore – never.

In Mumbai, I notice the same peculiarities I had seen in India: Muslim culture, plenty of meat in the eateries and high humidity. While thirty-degree Delhi and Jaipur feel comfortably due to dry climate, thirty-degree Mumbai dries the living shit out of you, making you extremely thirsty.

My host lives in Colaba – the city’s main touristic region, packed with all kinds of monuments from the times of British colonization. Back then, in the previous century, Colaba took the role of the “India Gateway”. At the times, Mumbai was known as Bombay, never mind it being the capital. Nowadays, you can only find here crowds of tourists, luxurious taxis and Indian weirdos who offer to take your picture for a hundred rupees.

[ Meeting in the kitchen, Mohammed’s direct speech ]

– “The first night is free, the rest are two thousand rupees each”.

– “You want breakfast, dinner? Two hundred rupees”

– “You want to go to a cave? Let’s organize an excursion, seven thousand rupees. You don’t have so much money? And how much do you have?”