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

‘BHAGAVAN IS STILL WITH US’
than dead twigs, inspecting it with a connoisseur’s eye. Then she
kneaded it, flattened it, rolled it back into a ball, and tossed it to the
floor.
The bus had not even moved yet. For a journey that would take
possibly twelve hours, this was not a good sign. After twenty minutes,
the only vacant seat left was behind the steering wheel, and the aisle
resembled a rowdy farmer’s market. Everyone kept up a rasping
monologue that continued to grow in volume because no one was
listening to anyone else; babies howled; a spitting contest was well
underway, the dust outside spattered with gobs of mucus and betel
juice like crushed raspberries.
A man I bet myself a hundred rupees was the driver eventually
ambled from a chai stall across the dusty compound. Barefoot, he
wore pyjama-striped shorts, a soiled sleeveless undershirt riddled
with gaping holes, and a tea towel wrapped around his head. This
was the unofficial uniform of all South Indian drivers. Bounding
with ape-like agility into his seat, he looked around at the overheated
ark-on-wheels that he captained, as if uncertain whether it was full
enough to warrant leaving yet. Then he lit a crackling beedie, hit
an air horn that almost ripped my eardrums out, and started up
what sounded like the engine of an ancient combine harvester. After
a brutal altercation with the gearbox, he had us smashing and
swaying over ruts and rocks out onto the open road.
An hour later we had stopped five times to pick up a few more
farmyards, two Tamil nuns, and a woman with an arse like a sofa.
She made her way belligerently down the aisle, then lowered herself
beside the man next to me. Soon she’d squeezed him practically
into my lap, sighing mightily. She carried a huge plastic hold-all,
much repaired and reinforced with various kinds of string. From
this she pulled a kerosene pressure stove, giving its brass torso a
good pump, then placing it by her feet and actually lighting it. Adjusting
the roaring bracelet of flame to her satisfaction, she next produced
an old aluminium saucepan tied in a cloth to hold its lid on. She
unwrapped this, peered beneath the lid at what smelled like stewed
moss in tamarind gravy, and finally placed it on the sputtering blue
fire below. These exertions required that she angrily shift three
hundred pounds of buttock until she’d achieved the extra room she
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