The Spiceman
by
Steven Hunley
He locked his notebook in his suitcase and peered out the dirty window. The street below was narrow, the end of the road. His time spent wandering the Grand Trunk, the road Kipling called, “the road of Hindustan” where “all India spread out left and right” was over. Now it was Calcutta and the trip home. Adventure over.
He hung up his pith helmet and noticed the linen was still fairly white, but the brass pins that held the linen in place on the cork were rusted green from the climate. Two months in India trying to establish his credentials as a photo-journalist were hardly enough. Now there were only the notes left to work on and the film chip to be downloaded and processed. Back to the nasty computer. His days of trying to be the twenty-first century Kipling were finished. Adventure over, again.
He’d signed aboard a slow steamer, the Hokaido Maru, a rust bucket by any honest man’s description. Not a slow boat to China mind you, a steamer to San Francisco that stopped at several ports on the way. The fare was cheap, food included. Food full of iron from the rust in case you were feeling a little anemic. But that was tomorrow.
Now he was hungry and down to his very last dollar. He cut it too close this time. He decided to look for a cheap food stall. To get there he crossed a street lined with spice sellers. Piles of unidentifiable stuff surrounded him like a beautiful but hungry constrictor. Ever since he was a child, since before he could walk, he’d been intrigued by piles of unidentifiable stuff.
“I like the look of these piles of stuff,” he said to himself thoughtfully.
Twenty-two years later and he still hadn’t changed. Sometimes he’d wander through junk yards taking pictures of unidentifiable car parts. But this stuff was different. These piles didn’t smell like rusting metal and rubber and black dirty oil. These were colorful and fragrant. He turned the corner and wandered into a street even more stuffed and narrow with all kinds of goods smelling good to take a closer look.
And why not? He had his camera.
People everywhere schlepping. Mostly men with plump heavy sacks balanced on their shoulders and heads. Tiny trucks with corrugated iron roofs piled high with more sacks of spices squeezed between one thousand and one motor bikes slipping between them whenever they got a chance. Pedicabs driven and Rickshaws pulled by strong brown paper-thin men. Dark-haired women with even darker eyes wearing colorful saffron saris. Here, shopping and evaluating. There, looking and smelling and tasting and touching. Then, both closely watching the weighing.
Dark-haired men in tropical suits with sweat-stained armpits abounded. Their hands were attached to scuffed brown-leather briefcases. Attorneys on their way home from court were always prepared to haggle with shop-keepers until they dropped from the heat.
There were so many textures and shapes and smells and colors it set his head reeling. Weak from a bad case of Delhi-Belly, he had to sit down on a small wall. He felt faint and couldn’t even think in whole sentences. His eyes closed.
“Cup of tea?” a voice offered.
“I can’t afford…”
“No charge sir, it’s only a cup of herb tea. Cardamom and Turmeric. Good for the belly.”
He opened his eyes and there was a man. Age had salted and peppered his hair. He was short and exuded power, even though he wasn’t what the novelists call “powerfully built.” His eyes sparkled with goodness.
“If you’re sure there’s no charge…”
“Oh by gosh, no sir. This is what you American’s call, “on the house.” Here, sit here please.”
The short fellow took him in hand and led him away from the street. It was suddenly quiet. Now he was drinking dark sweet tea from a porcelain cup with a chipped rim. It tasted good, whatever it was. It was like sipping tea, but like taking a breath of fresh air at the same time. He felt refreshed and alert.
A small baby girl, just a toddler, was playing with a blue ball one half her size. There were bags stacked against the walls and piles of spices and herbs displayed on white paper squares on tables.
“Is this your shop?”
“Yes Sir, forever.”
“Your daughter?”
“Oh my, no,” he said clearly flattered, “My granddaughter, Lakshmi, Sir.”
Toddlers can be charming. She wanted the ball but each time she approached it her toes hit it long before her hands could reach and forced her to chase after it. The ball was teaching her to walk.
They watched the little girl and then turned to each other. When their smiles met, he noticed a certain amount of pride in the man’s brown eyes just past the sparkle.
“But, forgive me for my rudeness and allow me to present myself.”
He stepped closer, stood at attention and offered his hand.
“I’m Billy Fish.”
“And I’m Taylor, Mr. Fish.”
“Just call me Billy. I was born Premchand Chaterjee Lahiri Tagore. But everyone here finds that hard to pronounce, much less remember. I’m a Gurka you know.”
He dared not give the full name a try and remarked,
“I see what you mean. Well then, Billy it is. But why fish?”
His face took a serious turn. “Oh, because I like fish very much. It is a fact. I like them baked with lemon and garlic, or fried with chips then wrapped in a page from the Times.”
“I see. You know this tea is very good. I’ve been traveling and I picked up a bug somewhere. My stomach feels fine now.”
“Ah,” he said, “That would be this,”
He pointed at the pile of Cardamom in the corner.
“It is called the Queen of the Spices. It has a calming effect and is good for the digestion. And I add a pinch of this.”
He pointed to a yellow pile of Turmeric.
“And this.”
Sweet brown carob pods sat in a piled in a bowl.
“Then I add Sarsaparilla root and ginger for flavor. You know Sir, it’s very true what Mary Poppins once said, “A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
“ I agree. You certainly know your spices and herbs.”
“By gosh yes. I have studied. It’s all based on Ayurvedic medicine. They’re not my formulas you know, they’ve been around for over three thousand years.
He heard a note of pride in his voice. It wasn’t a personal pride, like his eyes showed about his granddaughter. It was the pride of a man in his culture.
The toddler was kicking the ball here and there, all around the shop.
“Even in the world of medicine, there are fads. Some things come and go. But these herbs and spices have been here before and they are here now and they will be here again. These plants are much older than us.”
They looked at each other and then to Lakshmi.
She’d made three circuits of the shop while they were talking, chasing the ball.
“Like her,” Taylor said. He felt quite lucid now, no longer fatigued. “Playing in a circle.”
“Yes Sir, in a circle. We’re all in a circle of some sort. Like the wheel of life.”
“Like the Bhavacakra?”
“Oh, most certainly, yes.”
Taylor continued to take pictures and moved the viewfinder from one pile of bright spices to another.
The little girl was laughing when he turned the camera towards her.
Just then he looked up, and saw a truck speeding down the narrow street. The ball was rolling towards the door and Lakshmi was right after it. He saw the future. The child crushed under its wheels. It was inevitable. Instantly, he flew from his seat.
Wheels and brakes screeched. A woman screamed. He scooped up the child and his heavy camera slipped out of his hands and under the wheel instead of the child. One thing traded for another.
A crowd formed immediately and the driver nearly fainted. Billy Fish ran out and took charge of Lakshmi. Taylor looked sadly at his Nikon ground into the pavement. Everyone was upset except the baby. To her it was if is nothing had happened at all, as if she was a goddess, invincible.
After they went back inside the only sign that anything had happened was a flattened blue ball and a child’s tiny footprints in the dirt by the door. Almost forgettable. But Billy Fish was not one to forget.
“It’s getting late, and I’m leaving early tomorrow Billy. I think I really should go.”
Billy tugged on his coat and went to an antique cash register and began to dig in the drawer.
“Oh Billy, I can’t accept money.”
“Oh no, by gosh, I understand.”
He handed him a folded piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the spice of life. A very ancient and special mix with a noble pedigree I assure you.”
Billy‘s eyes glittered. Not like before, like a gold-sequined gown, but like the Golden Nebula.
“What’s it for?”
“You’ll know when you need it. But when you do, take it all. It’s made out for your weight.”
Taylor slipped the packet inside his coat pocket next to his Pilot pen where it would be safe. He wrote his address on a card he took out. He was proud of his card. I was a picture he’d taken on Easter Island, one of the sacred statues after dark, lit only by the stars and reflections off the white foaming surf behind it and a single hand-held flash. Impressive.
“Thank you, Billy. Here’s my address. Maybe you’ll visit the States someday.”
“Oh my, no Sir. Too much hustle and bustle for my sort of person.”
He looked at the picture on the card and wondered about it, then placed it in his pocket.
They shook hands again and parted. Taylor went to his hotel room. Lakshmi to her little bed and Billy to his bigger one. The sea breeze from the Indian Ocean made sleeping easy that night in Calcutta. The city fell into a hushed silence that was rarely heard during the day, if ever heard at all.
Taylor could not sleep. He lay back on his bed and considered. Two months’ worth of pictures down the drain in a Calcutta alley. That Nikon had been everywhere with him. From the cold and damp of Katmandu to the sand and heat of the Punjab. And Agra, where he’d discovered that shot of the Taj Mahal. A one in a million shot. It wasn’t a shot of one hundred and one Japanese and Euro tourists milling about, talking on their cell phones, snapping their snapshots, distracted, and dressed so twenty-first century. Missing the beauty, not listening to the silence. Not then. Not until the tourists had gone home on their buses.
It was later, at dusk.
There was a young girl and an old woman dressed in saris, both brown and armed with glittering gold bangles, standing near the reflecting pool in front of the Taj. Just then a flock of white doves flew behind them in a pattern and circled. That shot could have been taken one hundred years ago, stealing their souls with a view camera on a tripod or taken one-five-hundredth of a second ago @ F16 with a 35mm digital wonder. You couldn’t tell. Timeless. Irreplaceable.
And that crowded street during the wedding. The front of the Rolls first, the chromium hood ornament lady second, then the uniformed driver, then the couple in the back seat. Both dressed like royalty. He had just lifted her veil and they were kissing. Thank God for motor drives. He’d caught them all in four rapid-fire images as they sped past. It was like a sporting event. So much cheering and shouting going on, so much confusion. They passed by so fast he didn’t have a chance to find out their names. He never would.
Now his visual memories of the Grand Trunk Road were reduced to a small heap of expensive Japanese steel and glass, crushed into an Indian sub-continent gutter, reduced to tiny bits of techno-trash.
On the other hand, tonight there was a two year old girl named Lakshmi sleeping snug in her bed, dreaming of her blue Vishnu appearing again, as he did most every night. Even more timeless, even more irreplaceable, that was obvious.
Finally he fell asleep when he understood the nature of contentment. He knew karma-wise he’d made out on the deal.
***
to be continued...
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Originally Posted by Rem
