Indian mesmer (2007)

 

A black and yellow Bajaj, 150cc, Indian auto-rickshaw, stood looking for all the world like a gigantic bumble-bee, amidst the rural English countryside secreted in the hamlet of Elmstead Market - on the borders of Essex and Suffolk. The Great British summer sun glinted off its lovingly polished paintwork reflecting particularly English grass, verdant by days of sunshine and rain, and stroking the Bajaj’s South Asian wheels with considered affection. Condescendingly English bees wove their pollen laden ways in and out of the vehicle’s open structure, oblivious to its anomaly.

Tiny spiders, unaware of the surreality of their situation, spun their delicate webs hoping to catch English flies in the Indian-ess of the rickshaw’s interior. On a wooden post nearby a solo majestic magpie preened itself, one crow eye on its onyx and ivory feathers, the other mesmerised by a small shaft of light sparkling off the Bajaj’s exterior chromium.

A centaury before, in waning Edwardian England, Elmstead Market had stood on the main thoroughfare from the ancient Roman town of Camulodunum (Colchester), to the, then, fashionable coastal town of Clacton-on-sea. The eager gentry had frequently traversed intervening miles with high expectations of sun and sand, beach huts and bathing machines. Yet over the years few shops now remained in Elmstead Market, and those that continued to reside stand jumbled along the modernised main road. An obligatory local pub overlooks the rustic-ness of a greensward with its cluster of aged and ancient houses.

On these idyllic days the lush border landscape aches for John Constable’s return - such is its quintessential Englishness. White and overly fluffy cumulus clouds scud as only cumulus clouds can scud, while beneath them - an intrusion of former Empire, a poignant token of post-colonial responsibility.

A momentary glance through my Ford Fiesta Zetec’s windscreen brought an apparent incongruity to my sight, my amazement and momentary disbelief. I doubted my sight and my senses and instantly constructed all manner of reasoned explanations as to why I could not be seeing a singular Indian vehicle standing in an exemplary English village.

I turned my sleek new vehicle around in the road and re-drove those few yards in near heart-stopping apprehension, only to have my original sighting re-affirmed. I sat, motionless, staring through my side window at a sight I could only have imagined in my most ludicrous and bizarre dreams.

As if it was a dream’s residue the essence of the Indian Bajaj seeped into my consciousness, stirring memories of India, begging me to recall past journeying and eccentric sojourns. Recollections of Goa and labyrinthine excursions from Candolim to Panaji came unbidden as did memories of dusty Chennai with its crowded streets between Anna Nagar and the Thyagaraja Nagar (T Nagar) - where the tailors stitch their livelihoods. A soporific flood of reminiscences sought to overwhelm my senses as dream and reality became blurred - I imagined hearing rasping hawkers call and emaciated Brahma bulls low. My senses assailed, I cognized the disturbed street dust along with the acrid essence of borneol camphor, and ever sweet smell of jasmine flowers.

I reposed in my own vehicle transfixed and transported spiritually to the Indian realm. My consciousness awash with vistas of that grand Asian subcontinent as my subconscious mind continued piloting the Cartesian machine.

Kipling, Gandhi and my own dear father spun as symbolic wraiths drifting in and out of focus, blending into the exotica of my imaginings, subsumed into the beckoning daydream and lost to the world of reason. An enchantment bewitched me, an elvish glamour sought to unseat my understanding as my mind danced a crazed dance among temples and rivers, statues and hazy coromandel beaches with cooling maritime breezes. Transposed and transported I became at one with my imaginings, subsumed into the opiate dream of conjured recollection.

Silken saris gracefully floated before me, maidens in fine cloth and cottons smiled beguiling smiles, third eye marks punctuating their foreheads as a fitting accolade to their sublime beauty. Enraptured, my senses floated to tunes of sitar, veena, flute and tabla, my ears straining to catch the delicacy of lilt and profundity of melody. Classical ragas caught and transcended my soul each new melody and rhythm uplifting my being to ever newer heights.

And what colours there were - bright, dazzling hues of be-saried ladies, golden yellows and vibrant pinks, stunning blues and oranges, a veritable kaleidoscope of colours clamouring to lay themselves before my sight. The ever present sun shone, reflected, refracted, ricocheting from chromium here and a golden bangle there bringing a feast of hues and shades to constantly delight my sight.

A sound, just beyond my reason, began to assert itself into my labouring mind - a tap, tap, and tapping, rapping itself into my consciousness, as if someone, or something, was trying to attract my attention. I was loath to emerge from my dream, reluctant to re-engage with the world as it is. What passes for reality, but is in essence but a construct of agreeing minds, began to reassert itself - inviting me to rejoin this mundane existence.

The sound grew louder as my senses began, slowly, to adjust to my surroundings. The tap, tap, tapping was still in evidence as gradually my eyes began to open, and there, standing on the bonnet of my vehicle stood a stupendous kingfisher, his coat resplendent with the greens and blues of his sensuous feathers. Tap, the kingfisher’s head darted to the bonnet, tap again, as he struck the still moving fish against the grey paintwork of my Ford, a further tap to bring the stillness of death to the freshly caught aquatic denizen, slight smears of fresh water blood evident as the master angler launched himself, and his recently caught prey, into the brightness of the English summer’s day.

A final glance, and mental salutations to the Bajaj as I ignited my automobile’s engine, turned the car back onto the highway and drove away from Elmstead Market, the Bajaj and memories of India.

As I sit here, several thousand miles from England, I often think about meeting with the anomaly which was the Indian auto-rickshaw in the depths of the English countryside. It was strange, but then I have since learnt that life is frequently strange if you allow it to be……..