LINCOLN MEMORIAL

When you go sightseeing, you go sightseeing. I mean you do not think that you may become a sight yourself! But believe me it happens sometimes. As it happened to me when I went to see the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It sure will count in my mind as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. The only good thing about it is that only one person was there to embarrass me when it happened.
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After the conference at Raleigh got over, I had a few days of leave remaining. So I went over to Kamlesh Patel, a friend from my college days who had married and settled in the United States. I thought a few days of rest and home cooked food at his place would work miracles for my upset tummy. But I have never been wise.

The moment I set foot in his house, there was a twinkle in Kamlesh’s eyes. I could see I was more than welcome and was glad for it. He introduced me to his wife. She proved to be so talkative that I felt completely at home within a few minutes of setting luggage in the guest room.

After a small visit to the toilet as I emerged out of my room, Kamlesh asked, “You have not stopped drinking, have you?”

“No. Why should I?” I shot back.

“No, no. Just thought I should buy a six-pack for the evening,” he said by way of explanation.

I remembered my upset tummy and began saying, “No. Kamlesh, in fact it is not necessary and besides, I have this upset……” At this point of time I heard footsteps of his wife approaching. Kamlesh immediately cut me of and in an inordinately loud voice started, “Yeah…… yeah …. I remember….. How can I forget that…? You were so upset that evening … it was a dry day back in India … and you did not have any liquor at home…..there aren’t any dry days in USA. So let’s go and fetch a six-pack.”

I could see that the whole speech was for his wife’s benefit especially because the incident where I became upset because of a dry day had never happened. The whole talk was actually a camouflage for the word ‘upset’ that I had uttered.

“Devika, we will go out and fetch a six-pack,” Kamlesh announced. It actually came out like a question, and simultaneously a request.

Devika nodded. She looked at me and gave me a smile.

Once out of the house, Kamlesh slapped me on my back and carped, “Ssalle, eik chance mila hai, who bhi khatam kar dena chahta hai kya?” (I get this one chance of drinking in a while and you want to put paid even to that?)

Gradually it came out that his wife did not approve of drinking and so the poor fellow never got to drink. The only exceptions were when his friends (only old ones, from India) came calling. That explained the twinkle in his eyes. I mean, I may have been really welcome, but the chance to drink was the reason for the twinkle!

In the store, the guy selected some Irish brew. The bottle was ominously dark, but the liquid inside seemed even more ominous, actually evil. Well, to be fair to Kamlesh, he did ask me about the choice. But when you are a guest at somebody’s place and you see how eagerly his hand moves to this particular concoction, you would be cruel to disregard what his heart desires. And that too a person’s whose wife does not allow him to drink and who just may be getting his elixir, god knows, after a year .. 2 years … he did not have many close friends back in India.

I had the liquid poured into a glass before I drank it. My suspicions were right – it was not the bottle that was dark, it was the beer that imparted the threatening color. It was dense and tasted strictly ruthlessly harsh. Instantly I was reminded of chiraita. When I was a child, my mother sometimes used to make me drink water that had sat on chiraita sticks overnight. That water also used to be equally dark in the morning. And the taste? Ugh! My taste buds used to be dead to everything for hours after and I positively hated my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and the entire lineage till it reached whatever chimpanzee gave birth to that line. The way this concoction tasted, Kamlesh’s ancestors could stretch back to macaques and langurs. And to think that I had to consume three bottles of this positively malevolent stuff. The only positive in the whole setup was the pizza that kamlesh had ordered. I tried to drown, not with much success, the bitter taste of the sinister liquid in the sting of the pizza toppings.

Kamlesh went to sleep happily humming under his breath an old Hindi song I couldn’t decipher. In words that wobbled in his mouth before coming out, he reminded me that tomorrow morning we were going sightseeing to Washington D.C.

I tried to sleep. But the remarks that my stomach made about the ordeal it had to suffer were positively acerbic. When did sleep drown the acidity I do not know, but I did sleep for sometime. As I woke up, there was just a bit of dis-ease in my stomach and when I belched, a bitter liquid reminder of last night came out with the rumbling nothingness of gas. I brushed, gargled, shaved, bathed and made myself a gentleman and felt far better for the effort.

We got into the car – Kamlesh, Devika, Devika’s brother and sister-in-law, and I. In the boot were kept a 24 pack of coke and a pack of what I heard called “Theplas”. After we were out of the city, Devika offered me a thepla and a coke. I started eating. My god, my mouth was positively on fire which I quickly doused with the cold coke. But I loved the feeling and even the taste! I have already said before that I am not wise. I asked for another thepla which really pleased Devika – that told me who had cooked those spiky-spicy things. Barely had I finished the second thepla when I was offered another and yet another. The drive lasted 4 hours. In those 4 hours I must have downed about 10 theplas and about 4 cans of coke.

Kamlesh stopped the car on a flat grassy ground and about half a kilometer away rose the Lincoln memorial. Everyone got down. When I did, I found that I had a nail boring its way into the region where my esophagus ended and my stomach began. The pain was excruciating and pointed at that region. But worse, I had a tummy that would put to shame a full-term pregnant woman and walking around was rather difficult with my tummy wanting to go everywhere before the rest of the body reached there. I fell behind the group and stealthily stole away.

Once a safe distance from the rest, I tried spotting a toilet (restroom in American lingo). I couldn’t. By then it had become obligatory that I find one and find rather quickly. I spotted something in the distance that was a circular building and I thought had a chance of being a restroom. I walked there and, to my utter relief, found that it indeed was one.

Once inside I looked around. This part of the building described a semicircle. On one side were the commodes behind half doors that you could latch from inside but which were such that you could see the occupants’ legs from beneath. On the other side were wash basins in equal numbers.

This presented a problem. Having till then lived in India and having been practically born and brought up on the Indian style latrines, I just could not sit western style on western style seats. So, in the year that I had spent there, I had mastered the fine art of sitting Indian style on western commodes! But with these half-open doors, it was a bad pose to adopt. Outsiders did not see legs touching base besides the pot and took the stall to be vacant. Soon they found out that it was, contrary to their logical deductions, occupied. This made other logical deductions and foreboding cloud their minds. However, I was in luck – there was absolutely nobody inside the restroom at that time. I quickly mounted one of the pots that were shaped like a magnified version of the lamp that you light in the temples.

No sooner had I so ascended the pot, than a storm got unleashed. A succession of short bursts, like the staccato from a machine gun were let lose from the muzzle. It was just unsubstantiated sounds and they lasted for – may be a full minute or more. At the end of it, delivered of the onus, I rose, zipped my pants and came out. Mightily relieved and having regained the flatness of my stomach, I must say.

As I came out, I saw that there was a man in front of one of the wash basins washing his face. As he heard the door of the stall close, he turned towards me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a smile that I will not forget in a hurry.