The Man From India

a short story

The following tale I recount only with great apprehension. 

There is neither a happy ending nor a satisfactory finale; one cannot help but feel left with a bad taste in their mouth after ingesting a story such as this. It is a sad retelling of events; and true.

Admittedly the close of the story remains as open as most beginnings. The conclusion is tragic but the story isn’t a tragedy.

It is a story without an intervening act of providence or saving grace; that is to say, it adheres to the same rules as the rest of us: people—you and I included—muck about in every which way in search of destiny without ever coming into contact with anything eternal or divine.

Each of us remain stuck in our own personal vortex of chance, some just happen to be more exacting than others. 

The events of the story happened, and will continue to happen, as reliably as the spinning of planets and the angst of adolescence. It is not so much a story but a retelling of a conversation, one between myself and a young man of twenty-nine from Bangalore, India. His name was Amit. 

What precisely there is to learn from this young man is for you as the reader to decide, though whatever the lesson may be, I still carry it with me.

Some time ago I found myself on a boat off the coast of South Thailand. The day had broken clear and warm. The sea shone green and ruffled gently like a quilt being shaken off for dust; a patchwork of clouds hung overhead in watchful repose.

There were twelve of us aboard the small ship—a rickety white skipper no longer than twelve meters in length with a loud, likely cheap, motor. The daintiness of the ship ensured that us passengers felt each wave big and small that swelled beneath. Ostensibly we came for a tour of the Phi Phi Islands, which lie several kilometers from the beaches of Phuket. I had boarded to be amongst people that spoke English—my Thai was poor and the locals’ English was the same.

Odd characters comprised the group, which appeared all the more absurd once everyone fit themselves into green life vests. 

There was a stodgy and rotund man with a straw hat atop his head that he constantly readjusted; an older woman in thick-lensed glasses with one hand that totaled only four fingers; another dark-haired woman with unshaven legs in a too-short purple sundress; the remainder were as ordinary as ill-fitting tiles in a mosaic (that is to say: they were not ordinary by any measure).

There was little unifying pattern to our group other than our presence upon the boat and the shared, crippling nausea characteristic of novice sailors. 

Notwithstanding the captain of the boat, the lady leading the tour, Amit and myself, the remaining eight had come in pairs: friends, couples, in-laws, lovers.

Everyone was in two’s except myself and Amit.

When two strangers stand amidst a group of unfamiliar faces that are each previously acquainted, the two strangers will gravitate toward one another in the same manner that misery seeks company. Amit and I proved the rule and spent the day in conversation. 

Amit was of middling height and slim build, with sharp perceptive eyes that seemed to reflect a great deal of difficult experiences. His heavy-set brow protruded slightly and left his eyes in a permanent shadow, giving his already dark aspect a deep somber look; the whites surrounding his pupils had dulled to a smoky grey.

His brown skin had been tanned to a mahogany, from what I assumed to be a lifetime spent outdoors. His dark features made his yellow teeth appear whiter than they were.

Coarse, unkempt facial hair accentuated the lower half of his face, hiding his jawline in yet another shadow. He had on a pair of garish, floral swim trunks which I had seen him buy at the boat dock just prior to boarding. His black shirt was missing several buttons and he had rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, for the day was hot and the air seemed to grow more humid by the minute.

He gave off a vaguely troubling aura.

Immediately I realized that the young, dark man before me was of the serious type, a man so thoroughly saturated in unfortunate happenings that he has ceased trying to hide it from his countenance. As I do with most travelers I encounter, I asked Amit first of his reason for being there in that time and geography. 

“I traveled to Thailand to be someone else. At least temporarily. The man I am in my home country is a broken man—I started with nothing at all but still managed to lose everything.”

He spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable, possibly in an effort to mitigate his heavy Indian accent. He took measured pauses in his speech as if intent on dramatics (though I assume it was moreso him taking time to find the words to say, as English was not his native-tongue). 

“I have roots in the Shudra caste, which is but one disgraceful step above untouchable. My family has always been a family of servants, though at a young age I took an apprenticeship with a shoe cobbler and thus have been able to disguise myself now and again as something other than a servant, though my father disapproves of my strivings. He calls me shameful for aspiring to be something I am not destined to be. Unless you belong to one of the upper castes, India is no place for a life of your choosing.”

I looked at him closely. He looked back, unwaveringly, and I saw the right corner of his dark lips curl upward in what I took to be an uncertain smile. A strange and rare occurrence for a stranger to disclose so much so soon, and with such intensity.

With his mention of the caste system in India, I was reminded of the brief and unhappy history lessons I had sat through in primary school. I knew that, in India, castes comprised the social structure, and that any semblance of mobility was nearly akin to myth.

I say I knew of the caste system, yet I only knew this in the manner that those who have never felt hunger “know” that people can and do starve in places out of sight. There is no emotion attached to the knowledge, nothing visceral, nothing heeded any other way than intellectually. 

“Where are you from?” asked Amit. In his voice I sensed a hint of contempt, possibly out of habit, though at the same time, his eyes were soft and kind. The young man seemed like a good-natured type who had been subject to a barbarous series of events.

“America. But now I live in Hong Kong.”

Amit gave no hint of a reaction when I told him this, nonetheless I was halfway embarrassed to tell him. Normalcy to me was balancing between two first-world nations, places of wealth and affluence. I cannot pretend to be a person of money or consequence, though in his eyes I must have seemed as such when describing far-off lands that must have glowed within his imagination.

I imagined Amit saw me as someone of glamorous society and a subject of materialism; not because I was from the West, but merely because this is what those unbound by castes did.

“I’m a writer,” I told Amit. 

“A writer…” He repeated the statement slowly and then his voice trailed off, tasting the words in his mouth like a cough drop, and then swallowing them abruptly.

I took a sidelong glance down at Amit’s bare feet. Along with the other passengers, we had taken our shoes off upon boarding.

My own feet were clean and white and soft-looking, like the meat inside a coconut. Amit’s feet resembled the coconut husk itself: bushes of curled hairs marked the top of his toes and dirt caked between each gap. I could not have guessed how long the grime had been on his feet. They were dusty and in dire need of a wash. 

My gaze tilted upwards and fell upon his hands. Working hands, calloused and tougher than cowhide. I could see the granular texture of his palms and the dryness of his knuckles; the very presence of fingernails seemed to alternate between digits as if done by design.

My own hands, calloused and worn in their own right, looked like a newborn’s in comparison. 

And therein lay the difference between Amit and I: the difference was not in class but in worlds. A servant-cobbler from India with a relatively ordinary livelihood and stake in society appears to me disheveled and slovenly, even though I myself am but a modest, unrefined man who could not by any stretch be called a gentleman. I made only cursory attempts at hygiene, especially while abroad; yet, when juxtaposed with the man from Bangalore, I came across like a royal guard of the Queen. 

It is easy for those who have access to regular bathing and tools of personal upkeep to disregard those without as groups who choose to avoid bathing, as if it was a personal preference. Evidently, this is not the case.

Amit was well-mannered and spoke excellent English, and he told me too he could get by in several other local dialects from India. He held my respect, and it would have been amiss for me to believe he willingly boarded the boat with smudges of the day before strewn across his neck and feet and hands like tattoos.

If he had had the opportunity to rid himself of the layers of soot and mire and the general discomfort that comes with feeling unclean, he certainly would have seized it as quickly as anyone else would. 

Amit noticed the head-to-toe scan I did—he quickly put his hands behind his back and one foot behind the other—yet he did not address it verbally. It seemed he was well-used to disparaging looks from others (I made sure later to clarify I was drawing observations rather than disparaging). 

“So you are a writer then. I knew a writer in India too. Or, he had aspired to be a writer. There was a boy I grew up with in Bangalore. When we were children his nose was always in a book. He told me stories from the books he read. He was a better storyteller than even my father—a true dinner table raconteur—though he did not have the same deep and commanding voice. This boy always said that, once his infant sister was old enough and his mother no longer needed help around the house, he could return to school and learn to write like the great American authors—he loved Stephen King.” 

The cadence Amit spoke with was slow. Contractions and slang were conspicuously absent from his speech and each utterance sounded a little too formal.

These attributes are common among non-native English speakers but Amit spoke as if fearful of straying into a casual exchange.

“What does your friend do now? I don’t meet other writers all too often.”

Immediately I regretted asking. I registered that Amit had referred to his friend entirely in past tense— “he loved Stephen King.”

Unblinking, Amit told me his friend died of dysentery, a slow painful way to go, yet all too common in an Indian slum. They were both fourteen at the time. He never got to attend school; he never became a writer.

The nonchalance with which Amit recounted this, paired with the insouciant shrug he gave afterwards, gave me reason to believe Amit had been numbed over a period of years, years of routine devastation. His story was too blunt, too apathetic, too casual.

Not a drop of emotion touched his voice at any point in his telling. To him it was an offhand conversation piece devoid of anything that should raise an eyebrow.

I was quiet for a moment and looked out from the railing that we leaned on. The sea below gently rocked the boat. On the horizon I could see a grey-blue haze masking the point where the sky and ocean touched. Behind us, the other passengers chatted with unabating enthusiasm all the while. Amit spoke again.

“You must be looking for stories then, if you are a writer.” 

I nodded. His dark eyes illuminated like gently burning coals. 

“I have a story to share that only I can tell. Take out your notepad, writer.”

He began. 

“I told you that I was in Thailand to be someone else. Someone other than the poor lemming of a man that I am in India. Someone who can walk with dignity—even if I only draw my dignity from knowing that nobody abroad knows what happened to me at home. I must tell you, I require very little in my life for me to feel happy. The deaths I have witnessed from my childhood have thickened my skin and hardened my soul. I have since learned to avoid the burden of keeping others close to my heart. But, when I was four-and-twenty years old, nearly a half-decade ago, I let someone in and they have stayed with me ever since.”

As he said this he touched his hand to his chest and left it there briefly.

“She was three years from turning twenty. Her name was Aashi. She was the most beautiful girl I have seen in my lifetime. Knowing her beauty exists in the world reassures me that God does exist, despite the tragedies He seems to so often allow. I met Aashi in the local outdoor market. We continued to meet there for three years, carrying on a romance in secret, one hidden from our families. Only twice did we meet elsewhere: once early in the morning near a shed without a ceiling near my family home; and once after midnight on the rooftop of the primary school. Both times—the shed and the rooftop—we made love. Our meetings away from the outdoor market were two years apart, and they were the only times we consummated our feelings for each other. Twice was enough to know we wanted to marry.”

I braced myself for the rest of the story: once again, Amit spoke only in past tense. 

“Our families were of different castes: mine being Shudra and hers being just under nobility,” Amit continued. 

“Different castes may not mean much to you as an American. In America you love at the time of your convenience and you love the person of your affection. There are no preordained, cruel courses in life like those so inextricable from India’s caste system. Myself and Aashi, as we belonged to different castes, were not only destined to never intertwine paths but forbidden from relations of any capacity. It mattered not that I loved her and that she loved me. This was the way of things: of culture, of economics, of society. The moment we met destined us for tragedy.”

I observed Amit as he spoke. Beforehand I did not see Amit as a man capable of intimacy, for the first impression I took was that he reminded me of a wounded bear who preferred solitude.

At first I could not see past his untidiness, though now that he spoke so poetically of matters of the heart, he appeared handsome in a rugged sort of way.

The shadows of his face now appeared to me robust and striking; his hands now appeared not worn and dirty but strong and able. Beneath the grime—his most apparent characteristic moments before—there was passion and wisdom.

I could tell that before me stood a man in love.

“I had not the money for us to escape the thralls of society and she would not dare dishonor her family name by publicly courting a Shudra” he went on. “We had our secret romance and that was enough. It had to be enough. We had no choice. Our end would be upon us eventually, it was not a matter of ‘if.’ ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ as they say in the West, right? I led such a wretched life, but it all fell away like background noise whenever I was with Aashi. We spent three years in a deep romance, knowing all the while that it could not last, that it could not materialize into anything other than a shared secret between lovers.”

The boat had nearly arrived at our first stop of the day, a small island adorned with tall palm trees and lazy tourists.

There wasn’t much to see upon disembarking other than the bare and burnt skin of Westerners basking in the severe sunshine of the East. Amit and I remained on the boat.

We moved to the far ledge in the back where we could dip our feet into the water. The dust on Amit’s feet began to disperse as he moved his legs in small swirling circles. 

Amit began to speak again.

“There was always tension with us, myself and Aashi. Not tension between us, but tension surrounding us. Tension that could be traced to the uncertainty that plagued the very fact of our knowing each other. She had warned me often that her father expected to marry her off into a family of consequence and status. But then she would reassure me by saying that no amount of jewels or money, no palace of gold, could convince her that she could love someone other than me. So we continued seeing each other despite the coming doom. We would kiss in the shadows of buildings and I would bring her flowers from the fields. More and more I began to believe that we could in fact build a life together, given the right circumstances.”

Abruptly as if he had seen a ghost, Amit lost the color in his cheeks and ceased speaking. He stared down at his feet, which had also become quite still. It occurred to me that this story must be painful for him to tell, a reminder of the inescapable tragedy that haunts his existence.

As a stranger, I knew I was listening to a story impossible to forget. But of course even more difficult would be to live and breathe the story as the forsaken and tragic protagonist, as Amit was. 

We sat there without speaking for some time. The other passengers were beginning to filter back onto the skipper, climbing the ladder on the side of the boat and drying off on deck.

Some of them wore water masks that made them look ridiculous, and some wore fins on their feet that forced them to walk like inebriated penguins.

Mosquitos buzzed nearby and one flew right near Amit’s mouth. He did not move.

Amit began speaking again. 

“I was going to meet with Aashi one day. I was happy. Things were good and normal. She was crying when I saw her. I knew in my bones what had happened before she told me. Her father had arranged for her to marry another man. She had never even spoken or seen the other man before, though he came from a family of wealth and status. She and I shared three romantic years together, wretched circumstances of course, but we were happy. Happy and in love and fighting the tides of destiny. And then it ended. Her family and soon-to-be husband never even knew I existed. She was moved to Mumbai to begin her new life and fulfill her role as a wife. There were not many words we exchanged that day. A lot of muffled tears. Long hugs. Then she was gone.” 

As he spoke, Amit had a far-off look in his eyes. They appeared pale and absent and troubled; yet, they were entirely dry. Amit did not cry as he finished his story.

I imagine he spent the previous years resigning to his fate. The love was not unrequited, but simply doomed from the start. Two people in love but nonetheless bound by a society and tradition intent on keeping them separated.

Aashi’s father could not be said to have wanted anything short of the best for his daughter. Thus he made arrangements to fulfill what he saw as a proper path for Aashi, and did so without even knowing that he was slaughtering Amit in the process.

“I did not know that would be the last time I was to see her,” Amit admitted. “Even after she told me what had been arranged, a small part of me believed we could overcome it. Hollywood movies tell us that love is the most powerful force in the world, and for a moment I believed that. I thought, with the power of love, we could move an immovable object. But of course I was wrong. Hollywood does not know what it is like for those trapped in a world dictated by castes and arranged marriages. Three-thousand-year-old social structures do not care about feelings. Even love cannot trump this.”

The boat began to move again. We were being directed to another island nearby. I looked out again into the blue horizon. The day had grown clearer and warmer. I could feel the air of tragedy of the man sitting beside me. 

Amit’s story hinted that he had abandoned any hope of happiness returning to his soul. I looked at him closely again.

He appeared dark and sad, and his eyes seemed to shimmer with the tragedy he had just recounted. His dark features did not look sinister, but rather they made him look old and haggard and resigned to a life of sorrow.

But how else should one such as Amit feel?

All his eggs had been placed into a single basket that, fundamentally, disappeared off the face of the Earth. He was left as a broken, serious, and damaged man, traveling Thailand to momentarily be someone that he was not; for the person he was, truly, was not whole, and would never be again. 

I met Amit on this occasion only, and as I did not gather his full name have been unable to reach out since. In an unsettling way, I feel a certain closeness to him.

Though he was miserable and harrowed, he bore his tragedy forthrightly. Not once did he complain about the course of things, nor did he wish his life could have gone otherwise.

It is true that Amit was broken and serious and damaged, but I nonetheless arrived at the conclusion that Amit was noble and human, maybe more so than the rest of us. 

The remainder of that day on the boat—the day that broke clear and warm—passed accordingly and without incident.

Amit told no more stories.

This story was originally published as a chapter of my book, Everywhere But Home: Life Overseas as Told by a Travel Blogger (2020), which is now available on Amazon.

If you liked this story, you can check out last week’s short story here. Find me on Instagram and Twitter, too.