“You sure they’re safe?” Allie asked.
“Hey, it was on the Internet. It must be true!” Spencer’s expression grew thoughtful as he studied Allie and Drake. “You should say you’re brother and sister. That’s the most innocent way to approach it. They might have some restriction against admitting couples who are living in sin.”
Drake held his tongue, leaving the obvious retort that they were living in anything but sin unspoken, and Allie nodded.
“Good idea.”
They finished their drinks, paid the bill, and went in search of luggage, which took no time at all — there were three stores selling suitcases in just the little mall. Allie suggested a brushed aluminum number, haggled for several minutes as expected, overpaid for it, as well as two cheap backpacks for Drake and herself, and then they were ready to head to the train station and, from there, to the ashram.
“Bhiwami’s only an hour or so from Delhi,” Spencer said. “Easy cab ride.”
“How are you fixed for money?” Allie asked.
“I’ve got plenty of cash, but if you’re handing it out…”
“Hold on to mine, Spencer,” Drake said, sliding a folded wad of hundreds from the pocket of his cargo pants and handing it to Spencer. “I’ll live off Allie for now.”
Allie counted off ten hundred-dollar bills and folded them flat before giving Spencer the rest. She slipped the money into a compartment of her phone case and closed it, satisfied with the undetectable result.
They parted ways, and Drake and Allie headed for the Delhi Junction Railway Station, where she purchased a ticket and checked her bag with no drama, in the process confirming that the ticket person didn’t require identification to buy a ticket, but that she’d need a passport to board the train — which ruled out their riding the rails anywhere.
The prospect of an hour or more in a car on the Indian highway was daunting as the sun climbed in the sky, but they resolved to make the best of it and negotiated a deal with the newest taxi they could find.
“You are going to the ashram?” the driver asked, making conversation as he started the car.
“Yes.”
“It is a very serene place. I myself have been many times. Swami Baba Raja is a great man.”
“That’s what we’ve heard. We’re very excited,” Drake said, not a trace of irony in his voice.
“The swami has done wonderful things. He is a national treasure. It is an honor to be in his presence — you are very fortunate.”
“Yes, we’re hoping to be accepted into the ashram.”
“I believe they take everyone. We are all, after all, created from the same matter, and this incarnation is merely an illusion we must work to see beyond. It is a wonderful journey of discovery you are on, my young friends. Wonderful indeed.”
They picked the driver’s brain for the entire trip, and by the time they neared Bhiwani, felt like they’d taken a crash course on the swami’s philosophy, as well as his many miraculous deeds. Drake leaned toward Allie and whispered to her as they entered the town, “We could pass a written test on Baba Raja by now. Good call on the cab.”
“Every now and then I make one,” she said, and they sat back as they bounced the remaining distance to the ashram, unsure of what to expect but steeled for whatever the cosmos threw at them.
Chapter 36
Spencer’s neck and back were throbbing from sitting in the cramped backseat of a taxi all the way to Jaipur, and by the time he arrived at the temple, he was more than ready to get out. He paid the driver a surprisingly small amount of money and eyed the towering building crawling with workers on scaffolds that ringed the temple’s exterior. Judging by the number of workers entering and leaving the holy place, work was underway in the interior as well.
He took his time studying the grounds. The complex was larger than he’d thought, but any ideas he’d had about sneaking in during work hours were quickly disabused by the pair of uniformed guards by the entrance, who seemed reasonably alert and more than a little interested in him — one of the few people in sight who wasn’t construction personnel. He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and left as quickly as he’d come, resigned to filling the rest of the afternoon with busywork while he waited for dusk.
Spencer walked down the road into town, the sun baking his skin through the makeup sufficiently that he wouldn’t need much of it in another day or two. He tanned quickly, he knew from his time in the tropics. Although he did feel considerably safer now that he was out of Delhi. Even though Reynolds had called off the dogs, millions of people had seen his photograph on TV, and he wasn’t delusional enough to bet that none of them would recognize him even a few days later — his scuffle at the hotel had more than proved that.
The hike took him an hour — the traffic was nothing compared to New Delhi, but the number of ox carts and bicycles was at least triple that of the city. He even sighted a horse, its ribs like washboards through its hide, dragging a cart filled with produce, driven by a ten-year-old boy sitting atop the precariously laden conveyance, holding the reins and a switch.
Spencer had lived in poor areas of the world, but nothing had prepared him for the poverty surrounding him, even the recent trip to Myanmar, which was as bad as he’d ever seen. But here, the unfairness of life was underscored all the more when the occasional luxury SUV or Mercedes roared past, no doubt carrying captains of industry or politicians, who lived in a different reality than the masses. He knew the average local lived on three hundred dollars a month, but that number was badly skewed by the millions working in technology positions and at call centers — plum jobs that paid considerably more. Laborers like those on the road were lucky if they took home half that, and the income inequality was obvious when he stopped at a public toilet and almost vomited from the stench, as well as the sight of a family of four sleeping on the filthy floor near the urinals, out of the heat, all of them so thin they might have blown away in a strong wind.
He tried not to think about it as he continued into town, but the desperation was everywhere he looked, especially in the hopeless eyes of the children, who stared back at him with numb acceptance of circumstances he couldn’t imagine. The cows had it far better than these people, he thought, as a relatively fat bovine with garlands of flowers draped around its neck waddled along in front of him.
The wonder of the place for Spencer wasn’t the extreme circumstances — he’d seen more than enough of those while living in Peru — but rather that he was witnessing present day events and not something from centuries before. While on the web he’d seen an account of increased suicide rates among farmers, whose crops were failing due to drought and whose only perceived options were starvation or taking their own lives, usually after sending their families to survive however they could in the cities.
It was easy for him to understand how slavery and prostitution could flourish in such an environment, where criminals preyed on weak and unsuspecting new arrivals, who were always flat broke and desperate to earn enough to eat for the day. It was in this way that mothers sold their children to pimps for a handful of rupees, their spirits and bodies so desiccated that they could shed no tears. The authorities were powerless, due to sheer numbers, to prevent atrocities from becoming so mundane they weren’t even commented on in the media.