Eagalic Music

The night is pristine, star-sprinkled, tropical and romantic and the four travelers are finding their way down toward the beach to eat their evening supper.

Along the road are a band of gypsies who have congregated near the village well to cook their evening meal and to sell their wares to tourists. The women, intricately bejeweled and bangled, are given the task of spreading the blankets to display their sale items: jewelry, trinkets, cookware, clothing, baskets and even such things as transistor radios. They are the ones who solicit the customers while the men sit in a group swigging on a bottle of feni, the local spirits brewed from coconuts or cashews. They are here most evenings and Karen does not feel intimidated to stop and browse without necessarily buying.

After three or four visits, the gypsy women know her and welcome her smilingly without pushing her to buy, although she does buy something from time to time.

Passing through the midst of these folk in the semi-darkness is an exotic experience, one that seems out of time. These gypsies are those of storybook and legend, absolutely unchanged through the centuries. 

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We are lying on a dark blue quilted blanket, big enough for all four of us, on the deck of the ferry headed along the coast south of Bombay.  Destination: Goa.

The weather is balmy, almost tropical after the chilly Delhi mornings and the rocking of the boat is soothing to us. I feel we are riding a magic carpet, especially when I consider how this blanket was purchased from an old Sikh merchant in Delhi who tried everything to get us to pay a higher price, even asking me to throw in my pocket calculator, an item that has already proved its value to us many times this trip.

When we refused to budge, having already priced blankets for a few days now and recognizing its value, the old merchant sold it to us anyway, happily smiling as if there had never been any haggling at all and saying, “You are good customers.”

At the Bombay ferry terminal, this blanket was then given to a red-jacketed porter who we hired before boarding, in the accustomed local fashion, to jockey for a space on the deck. His job was to race on board, at a given cue, with forty or fifty other porters and beat them to a choice spot on deck which he would then claim by spreading out our blanket and sitting on it until we arrived.

“Otherwise you will never get a place to sleep”, he had informed us when selling his services and he was right. We had a choice spot on deck, while many who arrived later were forced to the inner decks with little or no view. 

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I was about 10 years old
and coming home from school.

I remember getting off the streetcar
at the loop by the El Dorado Drive-in Theatre
in Winnipeg’s North Kildonan district

I was asking myself why
my mother didn’t name me Leonard.
I have no idea
where that thought came from
but to my young mind,
it was suddenly the coolest of names.

Soon afterwards, this crush was replaced
by the desire for a Yo-Yo Brand yoyo
with a candy-apple blue finish
which I could not afford.

And then came the crush
that would upend all previous crushes…

Wendy…
a cute little blond my own age
who lived down the lane.

This crush marked the end
of my childhood.

This morning I put your book on the table,
the one you gave to me for Christmas
 just before you told me you were going away
and might never come back.

I have read this book from cover to cover
but its message is deeper than words.
Now whenever I look at it,
I am reminded of you.

Back at the Marina Hotel our tourist life proceeds, usually beginning with an English tea and toast breakfast in the hotel cafeteria. For about $20. Canadian per night we dine amidst brass fittings and the ministrations of white-coated waiters. This is far too expensive for us however and using our tour books we begin the search for more reasonably priced accommodation.

Soon we find what we are looking for, not too far distant from Connaught Circle, a hostel that also serves meals and with a room large enough for our family. We are on the top floor with access to the rooftop and from here we can look out on the looming and burgeoning architecture of New Delhi complete with Western-style high rise office towers built largely without the use of the high tech machinery so common in North America.

The hand constructed scaffolding on such structures comes straight out of Gulliver’s Travels. Whole families camp out at the construction site while the work is going on and it’s not uncommon to see very young children playing, or even tied up near construction sights while their parents work.

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