35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘I AM ALWAYS WITH YOU’
With little conversation to interrupt the silence between us, I
studied the passing landscape. Recently crippled two- and threewheeled
vehicles stood propped up by piles of rocks. Rusty engines
leaned against huge roots, wild and naked men smashing stones
against crowbars and levering up blasted carburettors, pulverised
gearboxes. And in countless ditches between these desolations,
mangled remains of entire burned-out vehicles were being
cannibalised by hunter-gatherer mechanics for parts. Nothing is
wasted in India, where recycling has long been essential common
practice.
‘Detroit in the Stone Age?’ I commented to Joy at one point.
‘It’s all His will,’ she replied, her right leg bouncing through
layers of sari cotton to some private inner beat.
‘What?’
‘Everything is His will.’
A handpainted sign read ‘Now enting Anda Pradess.’ The
disastrous road seemed to have given up, exhausted. We bumped
and lurched over entire miles of bare dust, suddenly rediscovering
briefly a blistered and forlorn metalled track. The air buffeting my
face now was as hot as that pouring from a bread-oven door. We had
certainly quit Bangalore’s air-conditioned plateau. Andhra Pradesh
knew no winter; besides the monsoon – if it came – there were only
varying calibres of summer, usually with a heat that left you
breathless and speechless. Maybe Joy had been here too long?
Twisting around one especially drastic corner, Abdul gnashed
down through objecting gears to bring his car to an unsteady halt
beneath a spinney of huge overarching trees. In the enormous shade
below, there squatted one lonely, lurching thatch-roofed shack, with
a telltale collection of handmade wooden benches and tables spewed
out in the mottled dust from its dim and smoky maw. It was a
commercial enterprise.
‘Chaichai?’ the pathologically untalkative driver inquired. He’d
extracted the bald ignition key and opened his squeaking door.
Some relative or dear friend must have owned this excessively
humble rustic joint, plunked down at the edge of burned mountains,
stacked and verdant paddies, and flailing groves of tall palms.
‘What a landscape!’ I remarked to my companion, who slurped a
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