The Backpacker by John Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

having a better time than I was. Maybe he had simply had his fill and gone back to normality, back to his old job and suburban life in England.
    Dudley, Zed and I had less than a week left before we were due to fly home and I was beginning to think about my life in England. My regimented, mundane, nine-to-five life. The whole trip so far had been played by ear, and, though it didn’t lend itself to any logical order geographically speaking, I was beginning to like the spontaneity of travel without any plans. No airline tickets and no guidebook, just a sense of moving forward as a particular set of events dictated.
    Neither of my two companions had actually mentioned our impending departure. On the contrary, the opposite was true. As far as I knew they hadn’t even discussed it with each other; a kind of refusal to accept the facts. It’s just like going to school for the first time, or Monday morning at work; nobody wants to face it. Human nature I guess. Whenever I thought about going home, really getting on a flight to London, the feeling in my stomach was the same feeling I got as a kid on a trip to the dentist .
    Over the past week, the mood between Zed and me had changed from one of complete freedom at having no boundaries, to one of resignation. We were like convicts who had escaped from prison, and, after being on the run, had been caught and told that we were permitted one more week in the free world. Seven days of fun in the knowledge that it would all be over soon.
    Dudley, on the other hand, had said nothing, and was generally difficult to read. He’d bought a tabla in the market and was learning to play in the room most evenings. Unlike Zed and me, who were simply dreading going back home and showed our unhappiness, Dudley looked forward and said that he would continue to learn the tabla in London, taking lessons at the local evening institute. He wanted to meet Ravi Shankar. I told him that Ravi Shankar played sitar but he was undeterred, and felt sure that he had what it took to be concert-class, if indeed that’s the level that tabla players attained.
    Each night Dudley sat cross-legged on the bed, beating out a rhythm: boing, bing-boing , that he supposedly copied from the Tabla in A Day songbook that came free with the instrument. It had a picture of its author, Mr J. P. Singh, on the cover, sitting cross-legged with his instrument on his lap. Dudley was inspired, and had even been to a local tailor in Shimla and ordered a mundu.
    It was easy to imagine Dudley sitting on the floor of his university rooms dressed like an Indian, surrounded by his student friends, about to give a rendition. ‘This one’s, like, a northern Indian love song, man.’ He’d shift his position and begin: Boing, bing-boing . His friends would all be so stoned that the music would actually sound good, and they’d all be nodding to the rhythm, saying, ‘Like, far out, Dud man.’ My imagination went further and I saw him drop out of college to become the world’s first white man to be concert-class at tabla. A skinny, blond-haired figure squatting in the first row of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms. ‘Land of hope and glorrr-ry... Boing! ’
    Anyway, the point is that Dudley was moving forward and tried not to have any regrets about going home the following week, while I was apprehensive. But then he hadn’t split with his girlfriend like Zed and me, so I shouldn’t make such simplistic judgements really.
    â€˜On the left.’ Zed’s voice boomed in the quiet street, snapping me out of the dream.
    â€˜Upstairs?’
    He nodded, and the three of us went through the door and up the narrow wooden steps to the first floor bar. It was the same bar we’d been to on our first night in Shimla but had never managed to locate again. Not surprising considering how drunk we had been.
    We ordered some Kingfishers and, even though it was