Like a mantra, it fell down from the
radio into Miguel's car (my Spanish friend, who gives me a ride to
Munich airport so I can catch the flight to Delhi); the song says the
same over and over again: One day baby we'll be old and think
about the stories that we could have told...
That passion for collecting stories.
For collecting memories, since from memories is what life is made of:
memories. We naively think that life is made out of present, when as a
matter of fact it's made out of past. The present is so fast... The
present is like a spring of water, that we try to catch, but only a
few drops of what it was remain on our hand and that's it. What we
did this morning is a memory. The first paragraph of this story is
just a memory. The sentence I just wrote is just a memory. The last
word, “memory”, is just a memory. Everything is a memory. A
memory, a story to tell, and that story is our life.
My
first day in Delhi I listened to that song over and over again,
meanwhile I was in the middle of my first panic attack in my life, in
a shitty room of a shitty hostel in the Main Bazaar, an open hole
towards hell on this earth, with the infernal heat of a hot and
moonzonic July in the capital of India: One day baby we'll
be old, oh baby, we'll be old and think about the stories that we
could have told..
Himalayas. Second highest road in the world, 17582 ft above sea level.
One day I will be old and think about
all the stories that I could have told, but I didn't want to write.
My story about India. My book about India. Did I really want, by any
chance, that this would be my story about how I remained only 48
hours in Asia and I went back home, scared to death of being alone
literally at the other side of the world? (If I start moving towards
east, I will start going back: Costa Rica is geographically at the
other side of the planet). Did I want to jump from the Main Bazaar to
the airport, with borrowed money, to go back to the comfort zone of
my home? Or did I truly want to dig deeper into that open hole
towards hell in the Main Bazaar in Delhi, go through that fire in
the center of Earth which is India, and go out by the opposite side
to go back home? Well, yes. Which kind of main character would I be
then if I go back home now? And just like that, thinking about the
old Andrea, who would have to tell the absurd story about how she
spent only two days in India because she was scared to death, I
decided to give her something better to write about and, at the end,
I stayed for four months. Four of the most difficult and challenging
months of my life.
As I write these lines, in a hidden corner of Kerala, in the south of India, in an almost desert beach,
which is like a forgotten edge of the page where no one else comes
to write stories (just a guy half German half Indian, who opened a
hostel six weeks ago that seems sentenced to failure), I have only
four days left before leaving India.
Four months ago, in Delhi, port of
arrival and departure for countless backpackers, I used to see those
who leave with an unavoidable look of envy. Or not, even better: a
lot of envy. Envy, because they already had survived to tell the
story and they were going back to their Western houses, where the
overpopulation doesn't make you struggle every single day for your
spot in the world. They could grow old in peace without thinking
about all the stories that they could have told. Or not, even better:
I didn't feel for them a lot of envy, but a lot of admiration.
Admiration. And I used to think: “I will never be like them. The 46
countries that I have been to so far are useless. My backpack is my
school bag. I can't say I have traveled until I came to India”. And
now here I am, finding new travelers who just arrived to India and to
whom I can tell a small backpacker lesson about how to deal with this
chaotic subcontinent.
I don't like to brag about what I
can do. Or at least, I try not to. But four days before finishing my
stay here, I feel very proud of myself. Super proud of myself,
prouder of myself than I have never felt before. Every person who
comes to India deserves respect. And, especially, every woman who
comes to India by herself deserves admiration. Because fucking
country, it's not easy.
In Jodhpur, the blue city.
India is like the ugly bug you find in
the kitchen. Your first impulse is to kill it with the broom. It
scares you. Or even better: it terrifies you. But then, with time,
you realize that if you know how to treat it, it doesn't bite you
and, as matter of fact, it can be even harmless. Then, you either
love it or you hate it. I don't love it or hate it. Because India, as
a country of extremes, where you can find the third part of the
poorest population on the planet and the most growing number of
millionaires in dollars in the world, push you to the extreme. Never,
in any other country, your senses will be proved as they will be
here: there will never be for me another country with so much noise
as in a street in Delhi and never so much silence as in the desert in
Rajasthan. I will never be so high as I was in Taglangla Pass, 17582 feet above the sea level in the Himalayas, and never so low as I
jumped into the Arabic sea. There will never be so much party as in a
fancy club in Goa and there will never be so much peace as in a
buddhist monastery in Dharamsala, in the middle of the Himalayas.
There will be never such a hot weather as I visited Humayun's Tomb
and there will be never such a cold wind as I camped in the middle of
the mountains in Kashmir. There will be never such a hideous scene as
the one with the beggars on the main stairs of the Jama Masjid in
Delhi, and there will be never such a beautiful scene as the moon
landscape in the highway between Manali and Leh. I will never feel as
bad as that day in that shitty room in Delhi and I will never feel as
happy as I felt on the backside of a motorbike with that Israeli guy,
cruising around the seaside of Goa at sunset. India, bipolar and
extreme country, just like me. Maybe that's why is so hard for us to
get along. We are way too alike.
I don't recognize myself on that Andrea
hidden in a McDonald's in Delhi, eating french fries with a napkin,
scared to death of the Indian germs, when I took guts out of no where
and words and facts and stories and I went out to walk the streets of
India by myself. That girl, who naively ask for a supermarket in the Main Bazaar. That one, who didn't dare to take a rickshaw by
herself. That one, who didn't know how to bargain in a market. That
one, who didn't know how to book a train ticket between the railway
veins through which millions of Indians travel every day in this
country, whose heart no one knows where is it, since it has many.
That girl, who used to think she would never cry again when she'd say
good bye and who died slowly as she said good bye to her Israeli hero
at a bus stop, trying to get rid of him as a shot of tequila, which
it ended to be like drinking the whole bottle, in a very slow and
painful way. That girl, who didn't carry in her backpack all the
stories that I carry now.
The Cow and me. Jaisalmer desert.
And that's what it makes a good story:
that the character evolves. That she becomes someone else, more than
she ever dreamed she could be. There are many who come here to find
themselves. I didn't need to come here to find myself, but maybe I
needed to come here to feel again, that is perhaps what I fear the
most. Fear to feel fear, love, despair, peace, loneliness. To feel
again how it is to face myself, with all I have inside me. And let it
go, smoke it with a pipe full of hash or breath it with the warm air
of the Arabic sea, at the shores of Kerala. And become someone
stronger than I used to think I was.
And besides that, carry the stories in
my backpack, with a new flag to sew on it. The story about how I
learned to ride a camel. The story about how I ended up in front of
the Dalai Lama. The story about how I ended up in an Indian hospital
(twice). The story about how I hold myself together to not cry in
front of the Taj Mahal. The story about how a dead cow was floating
next to me during a boat ride through the Ganges. The story about
how on a rooftop, under the stars, as the mosques were waking up to
pray at sunrise in Jaisalmer, I realized I was between some arms I
didn't want to leave, even if that meant to lose the bus, the train
and the plane. The story about how I cried as they cremated an old
hindu man I never met. The story about how I shook hands with Manu
Chao and how I ended up next to Mick Jagger in a music festival in
the fort of the blue city of Jodhpur, in the night with the fullest
and brightest moon of the year. The story about how I got lost trying
to find Tagore's house in Calcutta. The story about how I wandered
around on a bike trying to find temples in the lost city of Hampi.
The story about how the fireworks never ended during a night next to
the Arabic sea in Mumbai. The story about how much you can sweat dancing in a silent disco in Palolem. The story about how you
defeat your fears not only of the unknown, but of yourself. The
stories, my stories, the ones I can tell without thinking that I
could have told.
One day baby we'll be old, oh baby,
we'll be old and think about the stories that we could have told.
I know many people who had come to India. I know many women who had
come to India by themselves. And I know that, probably, they have
better stories to tell than me. But in my life, in my personal novel,
there is just one person who did it: me. And I will never think
about the stories that I could have told, I
will be able to write them, until the very last letter, that remains
on the memory as the last ray of sunlight in a lonely beach in
Kerala, that becomes a memory as well, slowly, as every single story,
that always comes to an end...
