Oliver Benjamin
thoughts centered around how disgusting the toilet was and whether
or not the little Indian bidicigarette I had been given was actually a
joint. I also couldn’t help but acknowledge that the mess of people
sleeping against the bathroom door would no doubt effectively lock
me in there for the entire night, not to mention the equally disturbing
fact that my baggage was probably in the process of being rifled
through right under the sleeping noses of Oscar and Joe.
Far more disturbing was the fact that for the rest of my short life
I would be confronted with more of these tests that I was doomed to
fail, no matter how hard I crammed the night before. I was going to
flunk out of life, never to move past the grade level at which I was
presently hovering. How long would it be before I could no longer
keep my affliction a secret? It was bound to catch up with me at some
point.
In the short run, I decided that I would make the best use of my
prodigious abilities to be cowardly and deceitful to perpetuate the
myth of my glowing health. Surely there was a way I could fool the
people at Omniraja Ashram International. If they could fall for a ruse
on the level of organized nipple meditation, it would be a cinch to
cheat on one of their HIV tests.
As if a thirty-six hour journey wasn’t enough, the train was an
additional nine hours late when it finally arrived, screeching like a
wounded lemming into Daddah station in Bombay. But, oh mama,
was Daddah a wonderful sight. I bounded off the train and stretched
my legs as if finally being released from prison, and pulled a deep
breath of semi-oxygenated pollution into my exasperated lungs. My
freedom proved to be short-lived however, when a veritable flood of
hawkers descended on me as if I were a Swedish prostitute in a
Mexican jail. Unidentifiable scraps of merchandise were thrust into
my face by scrawny brown hands and at least forty voices screamed
unintelligible syllables in unison into my sleep-scarred face. Seeing
how I was towering over the assembly of wretched creatures, this was
the perfect place to act out an old childhood fantasy born from
watching countless monster movie flicks. I took a deep breath, then
puffed out my chest (which was pretty sunken to begin with, so it
really wasn’t all that impressive) and spread my arms wide, clenching
my fists and baring my teeth while releasing the most horrible roar of
fury I could muster, for as long as I could possibly hold it. When at
last I finished and opened my eyes, there wasn’t a hawker within
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