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

424
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
‘It would be a good idea, Amar, if I had any saliva left.’ I told the
driver to hit the pedals.
The inside of my mouth indeed felt as if some small furry creature
had died in it, continuing to use the place as its crypt. What the hell
was in bhang lassi anyway?
‘I meet you tomorrow, yes?’ Amar shouted, shuffling along in the
hooting, swirling hubbub far behind me. ‘We take boat, yes? Best
boat . . .’
‘No doubt we will, Amar, no doubt.’ The rickshaw picked up
pedal power, ploughing through the turbulent slough of raw,
unpackaged humanity.
‘You my good friend, Mr Paul, my good America friend . . .’ were
the last words I could make out.
The strategies for survival in downtown Benares boggled the mind.
A spacious stall sold only weights for primitive scales. Another
seemed to sell almost anything as long as it was red: children’s
tricycles, fire extinguishers, cashboxes, clamps, butane cylinders,
tripods, chairs, lamps, plastic footballs. Set into the wooden sides of
a stall that would have appeared unremarkable in medieval Cairo
were three television sets wired into some kind of video game. A
noisy scrum of children crouched, full of wonderment, in the
cathode glare, watching or playing. This entrepreneur – who also
sold one brand of sweet and a thousand varieties of padlock – was on
to something: no one had more business than video night in Kashi.
Beyond were egg wallahs, with buckets full of water so that
customers could test the eggs for freshness (they should sink, not
float). Bicycle repair specialists glued more rubber patches on inner
tubes already half made of rubber patches. And still further on:
bedrolls stacked floor to ceiling; buckets in precarious towers;
coloured glass bangles by the billion on tubes like water pipes;
butchers with haunches of flesh swinging in tornadoes of flies; shoe
stalls, always lit, for mysterious reasons, to virtual incandescence; a
Gon Shopp full of racks crammed with shotguns, and wide open to
the street; chemists’ booths, always with unruly line-ups; stalls
specialising in reconditioned nuts, bolts, screws, even nails; a row
of muffler vendors (though I never noticed anyone who owned one