Out of the Frying Pan.
The gallery was crowded. Joan hated crowds. Cursing herself for wearing straight- from- the- shop new shoes, she stood on tiptoe, peered over heads, looked for her Linda.
Catching a whiff of patchouli, Linda’s favourite, Joan smiled and turned to face a reed thin girl dressed in a sari.
The girl, holding a tray of steaming samosas, wasn’t Linda.
A man reaching for a samosa nudged against Joan causing her to stumble, nearly fall.
"Would you care for one?" The man slipped his hand beneath Joan’s elbow to steady her on her new fuck me shoes with their laces, ribbons and impossibly high heels.
Joan slipped her elbow free from the man’s hand.
" A samosa, I mean," and a woman by his side giggled as the man lifted a pastry in a napkin from the tray and offered it to Joan.
Joan glared at the woman, pursed her lips, shook her head at the man and continued on aching feet of pinching fire to search for her Linda.
The wail of a sitar wafted above the crowd. Joan glanced at her watch. Lunch break nearly over, still no sign of Linda. Now, her head was aching.
She found an island on the periphery of a crowd admiring a 16th century bronze of a dancing Shiva. Rummaging in her purse, Joan found a pill, any pill, and washed it down with a glass of something grabbed from a passing tray.
And then she saw her; standing before a painting of Raja Bhup Singh of Gular, and his Queen, Ragul. Sitting in the upper floor of a pavilion, Bhup had one hand fondling Ragul’s breast, the other pointing to an ominous bank of black clouds boiling down from some mountains. A flock of white doves flew from the eye of the storm to the shelter of their cotes. At the bottom of the painting, seemingly oblivious, an albino peacock continued grazing.
Joan planted a wet kiss behind Linda’s ear. " Birds are a bad omen in paintings," she said.
"Rubbish." Linda turned, brushed a dry peck across Joan’s cheek.
"Van Goch’s last painting, before he died, was a wheat field with crows," Joan said.
Linda turned back to the painting of Ghup and his consort. "Crows are black." She hooked her finger across that delightful tilt of her nose, gave to the painting her complete attention. "These birds are white and this is a palace. "
*
That night, Linda’s turn to cook, she placed the take away in bowls, set them on the card table.
"Jesus, that’s hot!" Joan dropped her splade, splashed more beer into her glass.
"It’s Beef Vindaloo." Linda sipped on her Lhassa. " Only comes hot, or hotter."
The beer foamed up from Joan’s glass, spewed across the table.
"What do you think of India for the hols?" Linda sifted through a scatter of pamphlets lying by her side of the table, moved them away from the puddle of beer.
Joan crunched on a pappadum. Flakes fell into the puddle. "I don’t think anything of India for the hols," she said.
"Oh," Linda said.
Joan pushed her plate aside. "What’s for dessert?"
Linda looked up from her pamphlets. "Figs in prune syrup."
"Shit!" Joan said.
"Exactly..." Linda studied a brochure of Agra by moonlight. The misaligned colours gave it the look of a 3D image before the glasses are applied.
Joan rolled a cigarette, drew the smoke deep. "What do you mean, ‘exactly’?"
Linda speared a cube of the fire red meat on her splade, and chewed. The Vindaloo seared her tongue like burning coals. She swallowed, and quenched the burning with a gulp of Llhassa. "Figs are nature’s laxative," she said. " Gets rid of shit on the liver."
Joan streamed smoke from her nostrils. "I do not have shit on the liver."
"You act as if you have." Linda spooned a thimble of dhal on to her plate. "All I said was, what do you think of India for the hols? And you go off."
"I did not go off." Joan stubbed her cigarette in her Vindaloo. " All I said was, not much."
She rolled another cigarette. "India’s hot, and I hate the heat. It’s crowded, and I hate crowds."
"Anything else?"
"Germs and Diseases?"
"Bullshit."
"Bullshit nothing. "There’s diseases in India haven’t been invented yet. Joan exhaled a blue plume that hung above the table. "And germs that even give diseases diseases."
"Must you smoke?" Linda swept the plates away. "Smoking’s disgusting."
Joan waved at her smoke. "So are diseases."
*
Standing before the tiny sink in their tiny kitchen, Linda scraped the plates into the bin, stacked them in the dishwasher. The Vindaloo had been a tad hot, she had to admit.
"We could go at the start of the monsoons. It’ll be cooler then," she called through the serving hatch.
Joan poured herself a generous gin, splashed with a soupsçon of tonic "Monsoon means rain."
"We’ll take umbrellas," Linda said.
.
*
The monsoons were late that year and India was hot. Surfing the heat, black crows scratched circles across Delhi’s blue, blue sky, as Joan and Linda struggled their luggage through a tangle of bodies from the taxi to the Hotel Miramar.
"What did I tell you?" Joan said. "Hot and crowded," and yelped as someone pinched the chubby cheek of her bum.
"Beyond the chaos of the cities lies the serenity of villages and ancient sites of worship," Linda quoted from the in flight magazine article.
An amputee in a tattered sari dragged herself from an overflowing midden. She thrust the stump of her arm at Joan, whined for alms.
"We gave at the Terminal," Joan said. "Twice." She held a suitcase against the woman’s stump. "See," she said. "Diseases."

Their room at the Mirimar was huge. Twin beds, each as large as their kitchen back in Bexley, were made up beneath latticed windows. A boy opened the windows and the sounds of the street surged into their room. He clicked on a switch by the door and pointed to the ceiling, where a fan, festooned with cobwebs, clunked into action and scurried waves of heat around the room.
Joan wiped spider dust from her lapel. The boy smiled a gap toothed, Huckleberry smile at them. "Air conditioning," he said.


Joan threw herself down on the bed. "I’m sure I’ve caught something."
"Rubbish," Linda shook the wrinkles from a linen safari suit. "We’ve only just arrived," and turned at the slightest whisper of a knock on the door. "Come," she said.
"Has that water been boiled?" Joan asked as their boy laid a table for their tea.
Their boy assured her it had.
"They’d tell you anything," Joan said.
"Milk, Mem?" The boy hovered a jug.
"Has the milk been boiled?"
The boy hesitated. "No," he said.
"No milk," Joan said.
Linda squeezed a sliver of lime into her tea, took a sip. "Delicious."
Joan groaned.
"Have a sleep," Linda said. " Afterwards, we’ll go for a stroll in the cool of the evening."
*
In the cool of the evening, Joan and Linda descended from the Hotel Miramar into a whirling heat of bodies reeking pungent spices.
"This," Joan said, " is the cool of the evening?"
"The evening’s young," Linda threaded her arm through Joan’s. "It will get cooler."
Joan screamed, pulled Linda’s arm away, pointed at a rubble-strewn passageway separating the Mirimar Hotel from the Oksosh Tonsorial Emporium. A line of young men, having their coral black hair cut and greased into elaborate pompadours, turned to Joan’s scream.
Linda looked to where Joan was pointing. The lights of the Oksosh Tonsorial Emporium shone on a twig of legs sticking from a bundle of rags. A cone of flies buzzed above the bundle.
"I noticed him when we arrived," Joan said. "He’s dead.
"He’s sleeping," Linda said. "In India, people sleep a lot. Whenever, wherever they feel like sleeping, they sleep."
"He’s dead, " Joan said.

They found a Raj Burger Bar beside the cinema complex on Connaught Circle. There was a fountain outside, a squabble of ragged children splashing in its tepid waters.
"Look." Joan pointed to one of the children whose body was covered in ugly red blotches and an eruption of white blisters. " More diseases." She unfurled her umbrella as drops of water splashed on her. "And that is how diseases are spread," she said.
"Oh." Linda pointed at one of the menu windows, "Tofu burgers."
"What’s Tofu?"
"It’s made from Soy."
"Beans?"
"Beans."
" Beans means farts," Joan said. "I’ll have the quarter pound cheese burger."
"French fries with that, Mem?" The boy pointed with his scoop.
"Any mayonnaise?"
"Mayonnaise to amaze you," the boy winked at her and placed a little plastic cup on Joan’s tray.
*
They took a table beside a window and looked across each other’s shoulders while they ate. Beyond the window, guards in dark red turbans chased the children from the fountain.
Although Joan claimed to have detected a whiff of garlic, they both agreed the burgers had been delicious. "Almost as good as you would get in Sydney," Joan said, doing a neat two step to avoid a puddle of something beside the fountain.
As they approached the Miramar, although the Oksosh Tonsorial Emporium was now in darkness, a street lamp shone on those stick thin legs, still thrusting from their bundle of rags.
Joan clutched Linda’s arm."He’s dead, I tell you."
Linda pushed her up the stairs. "He’s having a lie in," she said.
*
"I’m burning," Joan said. "I know I’ve caught something," and rummaged in her purse for a pill. " Feel me. I’ve been up and down all night like a yo yo."
Linda shooed a fly from their breakfast Paw Paw and fingered Joan’s forehead. "Slight temperature," she said. "You’re bringing it on yourself."
"I’m bringing nothing on myself." Joan shooed at the fly. "It’s this heat. I’m on fire I tell you."
"When you’re over the hysterics and finished your breakfast," Linda said, "we’ll stroll down to Dheli Central and book tickets for Varanasi."
"Where’s Varanasi?"
Linda showed her the brochures. "It’s on the Ganges. The holiest
spot in all of India. Much cooler than Delhi."
She waved another fly from Joan’s Paw Paw. " Trust me," she said. "You’ll love it."

When they got to Delhi Central Joan was babbling, Linda trying to restrain her.
"He’s dead, I tell you!" Joan yelled at the first policeman she saw. "D.E.A.D."
The policeman looked at Joan, then at Linda. He took out his notebook, tongued his pencil as a crowd gathered.
"I’m not a well woman," Joan said.
The policeman turned to Linda. "Do you know this, Mem?"
"Yes, I do, officer," Linda said.
She put her arm around Joan. "And there is a dead person lying outside the Hotel Miramar."
"For two days, already," Joan said.
"Since we got there," Linda said. "Or before."
Joan shook herself free and the crowd drew back as she pointed her umbrella to Linda. "He was only having a lie in, you said. You lied to me."
"Well how was I to know?" Linda snapped, and the crowd drew in again.
"Because I told you," Joan snapped back. " But you never listen."
And what she said was relayed from those at the front, who heard, to those at the rear of the still growing crowd who hadn’t.
"You know there is being a strike on," the policeman put his notebook away.
"Strike?" Linda and Joan said.
"The Delhi Municipal Street Sweepers are being on strike," the policeman said.
"Have been for three days." A man wearing a lolly pink turban said. "Shockingly underpaid."
The policeman turned, glared the man to silence while,‘ three days’ rippled to the back of the ever-growing crowd.
"For three days, the streets of Delhi have not been swept of rubbish," the policeman said. "That is why dead men are being lying there."
"In Sydney," Joan said, "a man lying dead in the street is not construed as being rubbish."
"In Sydney, dead men are not construed as being rubbish," the man in the lolly pink turban called back to those watching on tiptoe.
"I refuse to go back to that hotel," Joan said.
"OK. I’ll go back to the hotel and pack," Linda said. "You get the tickets."
Joan turned to the policeman. "Where is the booking office?"
The policeman pointed his stick to the far end of a very long platform and Joan began to walk there. "Excuse me, Mem," he called after her."
"Yes?"
"There is being a queue."
Joan sighed. "I’m sure there is," she said. "Where is it?"
"You’re standing in the middle of it," he said and pointed beyond the betel stained platform where a long line of men in turbans, accompanied by women hauling bundles and bawling babies, writhed to infinity. "The end is being there."

Joan was fuming. "This is the most horrendous train journey I have ever been on in my life."
"What was that, dear?" Linda looked up from her book.
"That person who used the toilet before me must have had an arsehole situated just below her neck. There are stalactites of shite hanging from the ceiling."
The train lurched and Joan fell into her seat. "Ah," Linda said. "We’re off at last."

"I have caught something," Joan said, as the train drew into Varanasi. "My fingers have gone numb."
"Well, you haven’t moved since we left Delhi," Linda said. "Your circulation has stopped."
"So have my bowels."
Linda reached for her luggage. "Some tourists would consider that a blessing," she said.
*
"Now wasn’t this worth the effort?" Linda opened wide her bangled arms, embraced the sky." Isn’t this divine?"
And as if she were orchestrating it, the clouds parted and a full moon silvered the waters of the holy Ganges."
Their boat man worked the oar from his perch in the stern and carolled a sutra in counterpoint to a raga being played from a jetty, where thousands of butter lamps flickered the rippling water.
Joan squeezed lime in to her glass of Bombay Gin. "The city’s on fire," she said, and pointed to a sudden flare of flame on the riverbank.
"Oh, no, Mem." The man stopped rowing, let the current take them closer to the flare. "Those are the ghats," he said.
"What are ghats?"
"The burning ghats. Where they cremate the bodies."
"Dead bodies?" Joan lit another cigarette.
"Of course dead bodies, Mem. The British banned Suttee. It would be against the law to burn a live one."
Joan wrinkled her nose against the smoke drifting over the boat and took a gulp of gin. The smoke had the smell of Sandalwood soap and made Joan cough. And the more she coughed, the more of that smoke she breathed, until she could breath no more… and then the wind changed.
Joan flicked her cigarette into the water.
"You only just lit that," Linda said.
"I know, and I’ve just given up. It’s the last one I’ll smoke."
"Thank God for that," Linda said.
The boatman swirled his oar and continued with his sutra. The butter lamps glittered in their wake. The smell of sandlewood hung heavy in the air, and Joan’s last cigarette flowed down the Ganges to the sea.

Holding a reeking lantern on a pole, their guide led the way back to the hotel. " Now, my legs have gone numb," Joan wailed.
"Keep up," Linda called back. "You shouldn’t have gutsed all that Gin. We’re almost there."
"I can’t," she whispered and felt herself falling.
Far, far beyond, from where she had fallen, Joan watched as the moon turned to the stars and distinctly heard her say to them, "It’s the drink, you know." And seemed to hear the stars tut in agreement just before everything faded to black.

Lying in the hotel bed, although she could not speak or move, Joan heard and felt everything. Felt someone lift her eyelid, heard a man’s voice say, "She wouldn’t have felt a thing. It was probably an aneurism. We would knowi more if we were to be doing an autopsy."
"Aubloodytopsy?" Joan heard the crash of thunder, the sudden patter of rain.
She felt a cool breeze gust through the window, and someone else say, "The monsoon, at last, thank God."
"Would you be making arrangements for the body to be flown home?" Joan heard the man, she felt he was a doctor, ask.
"No. That would be expensive and I don’t think our insurance covers it." Linda?
"There is the English cemetery," Joan heard the doctor say. "But that also is being expensive."
"Cremation, would that be expensive?"
"Linda?"
"Oh, no. By far the cheapest."
"Doctor?"
"She always said… she would like to be cremated… when she died," Linda again.
"Lies," Joan screamed, but nobody heard her.
"Well, Varanasi is being the best place for that. Scatter her ashes on the Ganges and the soul, washed free of sin, will go straight to Heaven."
"And, besides, I’m not bloody dead."
"Would it confuse things," Linda again, " if I took a pinch of her ashes back to Sydney?"
There was pause, a long, long pause. "I would not think so," Joan heard the doctor say.
______________________________________________ENDS.
2900 words.
©Ned McCann
15 Church st
BALMAIN.
N.S.W. 2041.