Ash and Lil in India - Blog 9 - All Because of Copper Bottles - Part 1

I am buying a drink bottle in Auckland when I happen to tell the shop assistant that I am off to India. “Don’t buy a drink bottle here, buy a copper drink bottle in India,” she says, and without any validation I take her at her word. So here I am in India buying not only myself but all my nearest and dearest copper drink bottles. In true Taurean fashion, I have persuaded Lil there is nothing as good as a copper drink bottle to drink from, and she too is buying copper drink bottles for all and sundry, and between us we buy at least a couple of dozen copper drink bottles.

I lug my bottles up to the restaurant in the Divine Hotel in Rishikesh, where a German woman from our meditation group is sitting alone at a table; in fact, she is the only person in the whole restaurant, so I sit at her table. She asks me what I have in my bags, and I proudly show her my copper bottles, and nodding sadly she tells me she, of all the people in the whole world I should chance to be sitting with, got copper poisoning from a copper drink bottle.

“I’m sure not everyone gets poisoned,” she suggests doubtfully.

When I tell Lil of my unfortunate encounter, she, a Taurean drama queen like me, immediately pictures 24 of our nearest and dearest experiencing Delhi belly without actually having ever been to India.

The last 2 days of our stay become the return of the copper bottle project. Now the reason I am telling you this story is because of a story Guruji told us, the moral of which is “always follow the charm.” He illustrates this in a story called “the red fig.” Coming down the stairs one day, Thom is met by his assistant Limor, holding out his mail and insisting he really must read it. At this exact moment, however, Thom is seized by a desire for a red fig. Following this charming thought, he rushes past Limor, past his mail, and down to the local fruit shop, where he sits in the back garden eating a red fig on a plate with a dashing of thick cream.

As he is eating his red fig, a man dressed in a suit, who could only have come from Melbourne, smiles Thom, waiting for the snigger in this obviously well-rehearsed story, comes into the garden and says, “What’s that you’re eating? I’d like one too.” Now people in suits are used to getting what they want, so his fig arrives, and the two men start chatting. Thom tells him he teaches meditation, and of course the man in the suit wants Thom’s meditation as well as his fig.

As it turns out, this man in a suit is some famous Hollywood producer, and Thom ends up becoming the spiritual advisor to the stars... all because he followed the charm and a bigwig liked figs.

Now, having just heard this story, Lil and I decide to follow the charm when approached by a cheery young Indian. We are standing by the side of a dusty road with our 24 copper bottles when a smallish man, no doubt brought up on a childhood diet of chickpeas and rice , asks us, “Can ve help you?” Thinking of the red fig story, Lil and I jump on the back of his rather small black scooter; Lil at the back and me squeezed in the middle, both of us clutching our copper bottles. In a story quite hard to explain in any language, we tell him that copper bottles poison people from the West and we must return such lethal weapons immediately. Recognising this is not going to be an easy ride, our driver says he needs to enlist the help of a friend, and he points to Ravi, who is smiling from another small black scooter. Ravi seems, forgive me Rohan if you ever read this, slightly less flustered and more assured  than his friend Rohan, and he says we will find the guilty bottle vendors. We stop briefly while our new friends siphon some petrol from a friend’s bike. Then the four of us take off, stopping and peering in all the little shops until we find the one where I bought my bottles and a drum for Charley. Trying to get the shopkeeper to take back his bottles is not unlike trying to get off a parking ticket from Auckland Transport. Lil suggests she’ll take a drum for her son Nathan in exchange for my copper bottles. It sort of transpires that he agrees to take them back, but we still pay for the drum. It’s a very expensive exercise in recycling. Lil ends up giving her bottles to our newfound friends.

Rohan and Ravi are the only Indians we have met who speak reasonable English. They ask us if they can hang out with us for no charge, as rural Indians seem to have a lot of time on their hands, as they really don’t have any money, as they don’t seem to do much work, and without money it is quite hard to find hobbies. All the people here in this quaint little town really do seem to have nothing much to do but seem completely unfazed by idleness. They sit in their little stalls selling, I’m not sure to whom besides me and Lil, copper bottles, beads, woollen hats, jewellery, and socks from Nepal. Seasoned and well-heeled meditation and yoga devotees spend up big time though on pant suits called Salwars and pashmina shawls, as visitors here wear traditional clothes, which are ridiculously cheap as the average wage is around US $300 a month.

I am riding on the back of Ravi’s bike. It is very cold, and he takes off his scarf and lets me wear it. He says I can put my hands in his pockets, but I think that might be taking things a bit far. I just can’t believe what marvellous fortune has sent these two characters our way. Ravi and I call each other husband and wife  as their humour  is sublime.

We hang out with our new friends in between lectures, and one time Ravi takes me shopping and waits for me and brings me back, and I offer him $10, but he will only take $5. I am strangely touched. We ask our new best friends if they can find us a driver to take us from Rishikesh to Delhi, and our texts go like this.

What a ride it is and all because we followed the charm .Read all about it in the next blog!