The beach and the jungle
When he’s not playing foreman or shopping, Dimitri, the head of the recovery center, stays in the office, doing who knows what on the laptop, or on the phone with Mikhail, another Russian and former alcoholic. Mikhail is very rich and finances everything without ever having set foot in India. Dimitri likes to talk about Mikhail’s mansion in Cannes, on the shores of the Mediterranean, about his yacht, about the trips they have taken together… He says Mikhail hates flying, and the money just keeps flowing, with no more oversight than a few phone calls. The relationship between them is not clear, it’s more than a friendship, as if a blind trust binds them together, a membership to a secret society or brotherhood. Several times Sara and I have asked ourselves where the money really comes from, but nothing overtly suspicious has come to light. We live without extravagance, and Dimitri seems sincerely committed, even desperate, for the center to function. There are no patients at all.
Today the Russians disappeared after lunch. I stayed with Sara and Prakash on the tall, wide porch where we eat and gather during the idle moments. We kill time playing cards and learning Hindi with Prakash. In one of his ramblings, Dimitri said he would like to make the spare time productive by doing workshops, we could learn languages from each other, and Prakash offered to teach us Hindi or English, but only Sara and I showed interest. Besides Hindi, Prakash also speaks the local language, Kannada, he comes from a village on the outskirts of Mysore. He knows many stories, knows the local customs, and Sara takes the opportunity to ask him all the questions. He answers gladly and listens with equal pleasure to whatever we have to say.
Prakash is unusually tall for an Indian, has a pleasant face, with regular features, a well-shaped jaw, a straight smile, strong black hair. He could be a Bollywood star or an Indian version of Ken, Barbie’s male counterpart. Yet nothing about him is plastic or artificial. We immediately sympathized with him, and upon arrival, this assuaged the terror of finding ourselves in a remote location with the sinister-looking Russians. If Prakash had been there for more than a month, it couldn’t be that bad.
In the morning, while Sara and I were painting walls, Prakash came out from the kitchen, smiling, his face smeared with oil. “Hey! Dimitri asked me to repair the generator” he said, enthusiastically. “I’ll get the tools.” He is a mechanical engineer, and whenever there’s a problem with machines, Dimitri calls him. Prakash does whatever is needed, but he prefers physical work. After all, that’s what he came here for, to sweat and to get fit. At the end of his engineering course he worked in Sweden and there he fell in love with a Polish woman. They want to marry, much to the dismay of his family, who were hoping for a traditional marriage, with a local girl. Prakash doesn’t seem worried about the objections, his biggest problem is that now his girlfriend is coming to meet the future in-laws, and since returning to India he kept getting fat because of his mother’s food! Not wanting to waste the effort on a gym membership, he thought of doing volunteer work, and he found this place, much like us. He’s determined to get rid of his belly, and after completing his daily tasks he goes hiking or works out with Aleksei, our Russian yoga master.
At the appointed time the Russians return to the porch, we agreed to go to the beach. There are five bikes in the center. Dimitri has exclusive use of the Bullet, the flashier of the two Royal Enfields. I follow on the older Enfield, hitching a ride with Prakash. Sara goes in one of the scooters with Peter, Grisha and Katia take another, and Aleksei takes the last one.
The sun still lurks behind the clouds, but it’s always hot. Indian couples stroll along the beach hand in hand, fully clothed. The crashing waves sweep four women sitting by the sea, they laugh hard, wrapped in the same brightly colored clothes they wear every day, increasingly heavy and soaking wet. A group of men in underpants stands at a respectable distance. Some risk getting into the sea, frolicking and clowning, running away when a wave comes. The vendors try their luck with the few tourists in sight. Sara emulates Katia, she takes off her clothes and stands in bikini. No one will bother them with the Russian gorillas around. Peter and Aleksei are the first to get into the sea, they venture out of their depth, swimming out to the open sea with vigorous strokes.
Prakash halts, as a creeping wave gently sweeps over our feet. “Can I ask you guys something? Can you not get too far away from me? I can’t swim.”
“Yeah, sure,” says Sara. “We’ll stay with you.”
“Thanks.”
Dimitri scratches his hairy belly. “I’ve never seen an Indian swim.”
“I didn’t learn when I was little, I lived far from the sea” says Prakash.
“I didn’t have any sea either and I learned how to swim” says Dimitri. “Even here you don’t see the locals swimming, Indians don’t like water.”
Sara rolls her eyes.
“That can’t be true” I say. “They have all these rituals with water, and the ‘holy dips’, as our friend Rahul used to say. What they need is to have an auspicious reason.”
“Auspicious, yes!” cries Prakash. “If it’s auspicious everyone does it. There were some ponds near my village, my friends and I would go there to refresh ourselves, but only if the water was shallow.”
“It’s good to be respectful” says Sara.
“It’s not respect, it’s fear” counters Dimitri.
We bathe without leaving the place, squatting in the warm, placid sea. Prakash gets up with each little wave that comes and receives it in his body with a mixture of fear and childish joy. Standing up, the water doesn’t reach his waist.
After the bath we stretch out on the towels. Leaning on his elbows, the spirals of hair dripping, Peter flashes a childish smile on his tiny, spaced-out teeth. He’s wearing short, tight, lycra shorts, his body muscular, very tanned. A twelve or thirteen-year-old gypsy girl approaches us selling the usual trinkets, her eyes fixed on the ball the Russians brought with them. Aleksei talks with her by signs and monosyllables, they already know each other. The girl, slender and cross-eyed, wraps the trinkets in a cloth and leaves them on the sand, they go to play together. She lifts her skirt to kick the ball. Aleksei runs after her, smiling.
Without warning it begins to rain and we take shelter in the beach cafe. Dimitri buys us a round of drinks. Juice only, the Russians are all addicts, ex-drug addicts or ex-alcoholics, or both.
Perpetual Motion is a serial novel. Go to the Table of Contents to read previous posts.
Next: Meet the Russians
