Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones

Author:Adam Mars-Jones [Adam Mars-Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780571272297
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

The roof seemed to breathe out

I had time on the verandah that night to consider the impurity of my emotions. I felt a certain amount of annoyance at seeing Peter in this setting. Travelling to India had been my project, and truly a vast project it was. To achieve my spiritual objective I had been forced to mount something like a military campaign. Now Peter seemed to be casually horning in on my territory. What was a pilgrimage for me wasn’t much more than a lark for him. In the night I examined these feelings and repented of them. Peter’s constitution was perhaps not as strong as I assumed. He had always suffered from sore throats, and had been prescribed many courses of antibiotics over the years by Flanny.

The next day Peter was already amazingly better. He had slept well. The resilience of youth had done the rest. He did say, though, that the roof seemed to breathe out during the night all the heat it had absorbed by day.

Peter still didn’t have the strength to lift me down the three steps from the verandah, and that remained Rajah Manikkam’s job. Once I was installed in the wheelchair Peter could manage me on the level. In fact he grasped the handles as if it had only been a minute since he had last let them go, and he powered me away from Aruna Giri. There was a definite feeling of nostalgia about being pushed by Peter again, even if he couldn’t keep up that initial burst of energy. It was as if we were off exploring round Bourne End again, irresistibly drawn to the woods we thought were haunted.

I was torn between shyness about my spiritual false starts and eagerness to share my experiences, not sure whether to suggest a visit to the ashram or to keep that at least for myself. Peter had his own ideas anyway.

With a tourist’s hands on the handles rather than a devotee’s, the wheelchair began to find its way to more secular places. I had hardly noticed that a mundane town even shared the sacred geography.

Not that Peter would have cared to be labelled a tourist, nor even a traveller. He thought of himself as an explorer, and I had my own mild claim on that title. It was a significant expedition for me to go into Bourne End to buy a clandestine tube of depilatory cream from a chemist’s, and here I was sleeping on a verandah, serenaded by the anguished voices of Indian owls.

The exploring we did after Peter arrived was of a particular kind. I swear that boy had a sixth sense for snacks. He could detect the smell of garlic frying from a mile away, and track it down infallibly, although Tamil Nadu was a mass of smoke and promiscuously pungent aromas, both secular and sacred. He was a teenager, after all, voracious and splendidly undiscriminating. He liked food that was meant to be eaten with the fingers – in that respect India suited him very well.

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