\u201cIs it really possible to stay awake for four days?\u201d said Manisha. \u201cWill we even enjoy it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Four days. That\u2019s all we had. Two of which we\u2019d spend in the train, coming and going. I decided: we mustn\u2019t miss one minute. We emptied coffee sachets down our throats, giggling at the sari-swaddled middle-aged woman frowning at us across the aisle. We climbed up to our top berths. The bhang we drank discreetly, from a flask: mixed with rose-scented lassi to cloak the smell. Manisha was nervous: with edible marijuana, dosage is tricky, and she\u2019d had panic attacks. I did her dosing for her. Studying for exam after exam, in noisy hostels in Allahabad, in summer\u2019s endless heat, I\u2019d perfected bhang dosing. Coffee and bhang: that\u2019s all you need to stay awake and happy. In this moment forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust me,\u201d I assured her.<\/p>\n
Forever?<\/p>\n
Four days. Then back to university to pack our bags before hostels closed for summer vacations. Then Manisha would go home to Jaipur to marry the stranger her parents had chosen for her. Then I\u2019d spend a month at home in Hyderabad before leaving for my M.S. at Caltech.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy head is swimming, Avegh,\u201d said Manisha. Facing me, a foot away, eyes struggling to focus as if already a thousand miles away. \u201cIf you weren\u2019t here with me, I\u2019d feel scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind cover of our backpacks, on the seat between us, I slipped an arm around her waist. \u201cI\u2019ll always be with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
We were going to Nepal. Her first trip abroad. Mine, too. Her bridegroom was a schoolteacher. This might be her last.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me about prions again,\u201d I pleaded.<\/p>\n
Manisha laughed. Stoned, she always launched into a lecture. She was passionate about learning. It was she who\u2019d tutored me, exam after exam, these three years. It was she who\u2019d made me unashamed of my own studiousness.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me!\u201d She always resisted launching into a lecture. Resisting bhang\u2019s tongue-loosening effects. How could she bear it?\u00a0 She, the class-topper, going off to be a housewife.<\/p>\n
Always obliging, she began: \u201cA prion is a misfolded protein. Every protein has a correct shape\u2026\u201d I etched into my soul the sound of her voice. Low and vibrant. With all my might I focused on her smooth cheeks and dark curls. Around her, inside the train gently swaying, our bodies bhang-swaying, the world slipped dark and gentle away.<\/p>\n
Boarding the bus at the India-Nepal border, we\u2019d already been up 24 hours. I\u2019d stayed up many nights: but you never get used to the feeling. Of drifting, free of your body, through time. Time in a loop, freed of the tedium of linearity. Freed of knowing that I was lying. I wouldn\u2019t always be with her.<\/p>\n
Up the mountain roads, round hairpin bends, our bus climbed. Our stomachs, empty, fell downwards, leaving our bodies a longing hollow. The solidness inside our skulls fell forward into our foreheads. Into a locus of nausea dull but surely growing.<\/p>\n
Manisha held out. Then she prepared to ask me for a lime to suck. Before she could ask, I was groping through my backpack. I unzipped the plastic bag and gave her a lime. She took it from me without asking how I knew. She knew how I knew.<\/p>\n
How did I know? \u00a0How did she know?\u00a0 When you\u2019re stoned, you realize: separate bodies, separate consciousnesses\u2014that\u2019s an illusion. There is only One. We were one with the bus stumbling up the mountainside. My nausea was one with Manisha\u2019s. I wasn\u2019t yet nauseous: not need-a-lime nauseous: but I felt Manisha\u2019s nausea exactly as, soon, I\u2019d feel my own. Soon?\u00a0 Already I was feeling it.<\/p>\n
I was one, also, with the stranger who, a month ahead, would lie beside Manisha. In their bed. Tracing in the dark, with his fingertips, the contours I\u2019d traced with mine. Sitting beside Manisha, on our bus, bracing myself against the seat-back ahead to hold off the nausea\u2014I felt him. I felt the stranger, feeling Manisha, with his fingertips, a month ahead. Through his fingertips, I felt her now, at mine.<\/p>\n
Dusk fell. To keep awake, on the unlit mountain roads, the driver blasted music. A woman singing, falsetto, melodies sick-sweet. Why do we still want women to sound like infants?\u00a0 Abroad, they\u2019ve got the right idea. At Caltech I\u2019ll hear around me, as I\u2019ve heard on albums, women who sound like adults. I\u2019ll hear songs that face reality, without running from it with melody after melody desperately cheerful. In Manisha\u2019s low and vibrant voice, I\u2019ll hear the echoes of my graduating, from infatuations, to Manisha.<\/p>\n
An hour later, or was it a minute later, Manisha said, \u201cIs it the same song on loop?\u00a0 I don\u2019t understand the words, but it all sounds the same. It\u2019s so loud, it\u2019s making me nauseous! I\u2019m going to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d I pleaded. \u201cIt\u2019ll make you feel worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours later, relieved, we disembarked. Solid ground!\u00a0We stamped the ground to stamp out of our heads the giddying feeling of still moving. Just for a second. Stop moving.<\/p>\n
We checked in at our hotel then strolled towards the lake.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so clean!\u201d said Manisha. \u201cI could eat off the pavement. It\u2019s incredible!\u00a0Nepal\u2019s a third-world country too. Or is it that Allahabad is that dirty?\u201d<\/p>\n
Why mention Allahabad?\u00a0Irritation scratched at my throat. Or was it bhang resins?<\/p>\n
Manisha halted. At a storefront gaudy with silk scarves and purses. I opened my mouth to ask what she wanted. I closed it. These three years, long before the stranger had materialized, knowing that he\u2019d materialize\u2014Manisha had refused to let me buy her anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouldn\u2019t you ask your parents? Just once?\u201d<\/p>\n
All month, I\u2019d been longing to ask her. Afraid to wound her by asking. She seemed to have reconciled herself to our parting. Why should I ask her?\u00a0 But what if all that stood between us and happiness was my asking her, one more time, to fight for it?\u00a0To tell her parents about me. To ask their permission to marry me. All month, as we\u2019d studied for exams, stealing in the dark moments together, I\u2019d asked her in my head. Struggled not to ask her aloud.<\/p>\n
And now?\u00a0Had I asked her again in my mind, or aloud this time?\u00a0 Our bodies floating far off, my voice aloud as faint as my voice in my head\u2014I wondered.<\/p>\n
She smiled at me. She took my hand. We walked on. I kept wondering.<\/p>\n
Here, we could hold hands. Tonight, we\u2019d share a bed. Back in Allahabad\u2014our hostels adjoining, our classes the same\u2014we\u2019d had to book hotel rooms to spend the night together. Two rooms, with IDs for proof-of-address. My ID with a fake Delhi address. \u201cWe\u2019re engaged,\u201d I\u2019d tell the desk clerk with suspicious eyes. \u201cI\u2019m visiting my fianc\u00e9e for the night.\u201d\u00a0Peering from my room, waiting for the corridor to empty, I\u2019d sneak into hers.<\/p>\n
For strangers\u2019 benefit, I\u2019d called Manisha my fianc\u00e9e. Hadn\u2019t it bothered her that we\u2019d had to lie? To spend our month\u2019s savings for one night together.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook,\u201d Manisha pointed. \u201cSee that boat, rowing away?\u00a0It\u2019s almost gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the frangipani tree, in evening\u2019s deep blue, we stood gazing at the lake. Blue lake. Blue sky. Blue inside our eyelids. Were we still awake?\u00a0In sleep, she wouldn\u2019t be separate. Quietly, firmly separate. I feel her swaying against my arm. Back and forth, on our heels, the bhang is making us sway to one rhythm. Doesn\u2019t she feel it too?\u00a0Our consciousnesses swaying. One.<\/p>\n
Down her arm\u2019s length I followed her finger. Saw the boat. Doesn\u2019t it bother her that our time together was almost gone?<\/p>\n
Jealousy is easier. If I\u2019d been jealous of Manisha\u2019s stranger\u2014I could\u2019ve found him and murdered him. But to stand, beside Manisha, our hands on the railing, our lungs bloating with the murder-sharp sweetness of frangipani\u2014to stand beside her wondering why she finds it easy to look ahead\u2014that\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n
I seized her hand. \u201cLet\u2019s keep walking. We\u2019ll walk through the whole city. We\u2019ll run!\u00a0 It\u2019s safe. We\u2019ll see Pokhara when everyone\u2019s sleeping. Just us.\u201d Stoned-high, high with sleeplessness, high with running\u2014we\u2019ll run mile after mile desperately now.<\/p>\n
Manisha laughed. \u201cWhat about dinner?\u00a0I don\u2019t remember the last time I ate.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shoved at her the lassi-flask. \u201cDrink this. It\u2019ll make you forget you\u2019re hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to forget!\u00a0I want to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. When we eat we\u2019ll feel sleepy, and when we wake up it\u2019ll be tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really want to stay awake for four days?\u00a0Will we even enjoy it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes!\u201d Seizing her hand in mine, I turned to the street. \u201cIt won\u2019t feel like four days. It\u2019ll feel like a month. Yes, we\u2019ll enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt a pull.<\/p>\n
Her hand was my hand. Moving together. Feeling together. So where did I feel the pull?\u00a0I turned back.<\/p>\n
She stood still. Her hand in mine. Not resisting. Not yielding.<\/p>\n
\u201cAvegh,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a holiday. It\u2019s just begun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you\u2019re stoned, you realize: separate bodies, separate consciousnesses\u2014that\u2019s an illusion. There is only One. We were one with the bus stumbling up the mountainside. My nausea was one with Manisha\u2019s. I wasn\u2019t yet nauseous: not need-a-lime nauseous: but I felt Manisha\u2019s nausea exactly as, soon, I\u2019d feel my own. Soon?\u00a0 Already I was feeling it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3016,3018,3017,2404,81],"class_list":["post-18299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-college-students","tag-expectations-vs-reality","tag-marijuana","tag-romance","tag-travel","writer-amita-basu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19048,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18299\/revisions\/19048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}