Brian on the Brahmaputra

  DAVID FLETCHER

  BRIAN

  on the

  BRAHMAPUTRA

  (WITH SUJAN IN THE SUNDARBANS)

  Copyright © 2013 David Fletcher

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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  Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

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  ISBN 978 1780886 879

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  For Sue

  Contents

  2009

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  2009

  1.

  There was another dimension. It was the only explanation. There were the three standard ones: the up and down, the to and fro, and the side to side. And here in Jorhat, there was a fourth. No, not time, but another quite remarkable and entirely new dimension – in space. Or there again, perhaps it wasn’t new. Perhaps it was just the modern manifestation of that fourth space dimension they’d used for the Indian rope trick. Only now they were using it to skim inches off the sides of buses and whisk entire rickshaws into non-existence. How else, Brian asked himself, could it possibly be happening?

  Sandra had chosen to sit directly behind the driver, which meant Brian, in the seat next to her, had an unimpaired view through the windscreen of the minibus. That’s to say he had an unimpaired view of a never-ending series of countless moving-traffic miracles, which could only ever be explained by his new hypothesis on a further space dimension, a dimension of which even Stephen Hawking was still ignorant. Assuming that is, that Mr Hawking hadn’t ever ventured into the east of Assam.

  ‘And shit, look at this one!’

  It was a red, blue and green “public carrier” – with a horrible list. One of the countless pre-historic lorries seemingly constructed from dented cast iron and wooden off-cuts, which lumbered around the roads of Assam and, most significantly, had pre-eminence on these roads. Public carriers trumped buses, buses trumped minibuses, minibuses trumped 4x4s, 4x4s trumped cars, cars trumped rickshaws, and rickshaws trumped bicycles. Pedestrians were somewhere below bicycles, but Brian was not yet clear as to how they ranked in relation to cows, goats and dogs. And anyway, the status of pedestrians vis-à-vis that of the four-legged furniture of the thoroughfares was not now at the forefront of his mind. No, that place was currently occupied by the prospect of the moving metal equivalent of a brick shithouse bearing down on their insubstantial minibus and the unavoidable conclusion that there was about to be an unavoidable collision. Both vehicles were steaming past rickshaws and cycles as though the road ahead was clear – when it clearly wasn’t. When it was clearly far too thin and far too cluttered to allow the two vehicles to pass each other without there being a seriously destructive encounter.

  Brian gripped his seat-belt. This time their driver had got it wrong.

  ‘And God! Look at that bloody cyclist! There’s no way…’

  A cyclist had just emerged from behind a lorry, which might have been making a delivery or which might have been abandoned sometime in the Sixties. It was difficult to tell. But it was easy to tell what was about to happen to the cyclist. He was about to be squashed between a red, blue and green public carrier and a minibus carrying a dozen “Nature-seekers”, their agreeable guide, Sujan, and a blind or stupid driver.

  Brian’s eyes widened to cartoon proportions. He couldn’t not watch. It was just about to happen…

  Then the cyclist disappeared. Past the near-side front corner of the minibus straight into that novel dimension – followed quickly by a six-inch slice of the bus itself (complete with its rear-view mirror) as it slid effortlessly past the side of the oncoming lorry. The two vehicles hadn’t even slowed. Such is the efficacy of this fourth dimension and people’s confidence in its use. Only Brits two days out of Brit-land would have had any doubts.

  Brian was stunned. Although he was no scientist, he had, many years ago, graduated in chemistry from the University of Birmingham. The course had included quantum mechanics and something equally impenetrable called solid-state chemistry. All he could remember from the quantum mechanics was the image of a one-dimensional box with a potential of infinity inside and a potential of zero outside (which had served to convince him he was not a natural for the subject) and from his solid-state chemistry lectures, all he could recollect was that within the theories studied was the proof that there were only twenty-seven basic designs for wallpaper. But he could also remember that in neither of these rather challenging disciplines was there even a hint of a fourth dimension in space. Not in Birmingham and certainly not here in the cacophony of humanity that went by the name of Jorhat. It shouldn’t exist. But it did. And to reinforce its existence beyond any remaining doubt, it swallowed up a rickshaw. Right before Brian’s eyes, a slow-moving rickshaw travelling in the same direction as the minibus and about to be mangled under its wheels, instead glided by its side where there was simply no room for it to do so, but where obviously there was a convenient corridor of that “Indian fourth space”.

  Brian took a small plastic bottle from between his legs. Perhaps a refreshing drink of water would help him come to terms with his new knowledge of the universe. He unscrewed its cap – and made his second new discovery about space in India: that they don’t leave any of it at the top of their water bottles. It was full right up to the rim. Or at least it was before Brian spilt the top inch or so of its contents over his binoculars.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What’s up now?’ demanded Sandra. ‘And why have you poured water over your binocs?’

  ‘I haven’t. It was the bottle. It was too full.’

  ‘Oh, naughty bottle. Why didn’t you stop it? Why did you let it do that?’

  Brian looked at his wife. He was just about to deliver a suitably clever retort to her sarcastic observations when it slipped away to be lost in the depths of that blasted fourth dimension. Or that’s what he thought. The truth, of course, was that he was simply distracted by the moistened state of his Swarovskis. This was just the start of the holiday. He hardly wanted to screw up his wonderful binocs before he’d even used them.

  ‘Here’s a tissue,’ announced Sandra in the middle of his distraction. ‘Although I hardly think a little bit of water is going to hurt them.’

  It was true. Modern binoculars, and especially binoculars requiring a Northern Rock-scale mortgage to acquire, were hardly going to dissolve in a teaspoon-full of water.

  ‘Thanks,’ managed Brian. And he took the tissue and applied
it to the dampened surface of his precious eyepieces. He felt mildly ridiculous. But so what? He often felt mildly ridiculous. It was almost his default state of mind. And furthermore, he had a new distraction. Not someone else’s moistened binoculars, but a change of scenery. Yes, finally Jorhat was behind them. They had made it through the metropolis with their minibus and their limbs intact (thanks to that magic new dimension) and they were now into open country.

  Well, “open country” might not be the most accurate description of the sort of landscape through which they were now driving. Indeed, in a court of law, even the most incompetent of advocates would have successfully challenged the use of this terminology and would easily have convinced a jury that a more appropriate phrase might be “non-urban, ribbon despoilment” or just possibly “a bit of a bloody mess”.

  Brian wanted to be charitable. This was a poor country. It couldn’t afford the credit-supported niceties of Britain, and it had the concerns of daily survival to contend with, not the challenges of winning the forthcoming “Britain in Bloom” competition. But really, it was all a bit grim. Everywhere seemed to be falling down, or standing up only because it didn’t have the energy to fall down. And it was all so ugly; decrepit (possibly) abandoned factories, buildings painted before paint had even been invented – and litter, litter all over the place. And not even “modern” litter. Some of it had the air of antiquity about it. Brian felt that he could have sifted through some of those piles of detritus and learnt how the Empress of India had enjoyed her recent honeymoon. Although would they have reported that in the “Times of India”? Brian wasn’t sure.

  However, being unsure was the stable-mate of feeling mildly ridiculous, and soon Brian had dismissed all thoughts of rural ugliness from his mind, along with all that fourth dimension stuff. Because now the minibus was in tea country…

  ‘It’s flat,’ he informed his wife. ‘And well, you know, you think of tea in Assam, and you think of hills, don’t you? Not flat stuff like this.’

  ‘Mmm…’ responded Sandra. ‘But I suppose they’d need hills for that, wouldn’t they?’

  Sandra’s tone was somewhere between dismissive and inscrutable, and her comment left Brian struggling. Was his wife being sarcastic again or thoughtful or pedantic? Or was she suffering from their ultra-early start to the day? They had risen at 4.30 in the morning, had left the boat at 5.30, and after their journey from the river, through Jorhat, through the fourth dimension and through bucolic squalor, it was still only a little before seven. And who, thought Brian, other than a traditional French baker or maybe Margaret Thatcher, would operate lucidly and efficiently at such an alarmingly early hour?

  Brian therefore decided not to express any further thoughts on the rather horizontal topography of Assamese tea-plantations and instead merely examined their nature in a studied silence. They were very neat. That was what one could not fail to notice (after one had first taken note of their flatness) – and they appeared to be unbounded. There were no hedges, no fences, nothing which appeared to mark one spread of tea plants from the next, and therefore nothing to guide the pickers. How, thought Brian, do they know which bit they’ve picked and which bit they haven’t? How do they even know where they were the previous day and where they should kick off again on the new shift? And what if one of them leaves his Tiffin can by mistake? How could he ever find it again? Or maybe her Tiffin can. Maybe all the pickers are women.

  Brian stared into space. It was always a source of wonderment to him that he could be so ignorant about so many things. He often thought that too many people thought they “knew it all”, that they had an answer for everything and that they had nothing else to learn. Brian, on the other hand, knew more than many, but he also knew that he knew very little. He knew that there was a whole mountain of knowledge out there and that he hadn’t even begun to scale it, not even after sixty years on this Earth. And as much as he observed, and as much as he listened, and as much as he read, he knew he’d still not get more than a couple of yards up its slope. Even though he now knew that Assamese tea plantations were not hilly – and that they were studded with trees – to provide a bit of shade by the looks of it. And as he took in these trees he became aware of a lot more trees – on the left hand side of the bus – and then of the bus slowing. ‘This must be it,’ he thought. ‘The gibbon sanctuary. We’ve finally arrived. We’ve got here.’

  ‘Malayan giant squirrel,’ pronounced Sujan. ‘Top of trees. Everybody out!’

  ‘Wow,’ thought Brian. ‘A giant squirrel. I wonder how giant.’

  Well, when he saw it, he didn’t think “very”. It was a bit of a monster, but for a squirrel to be a giant squirrel, Brian would have required something the size of Ronnie Corbett, and this chap wasn’t anywhere near as big as that. That said, it was still a good spot. Hell, it was the first time in his life that he had seen one of these animals. And they were pretty rare. ‘So forget the “giant” disappointment,’ he told himself. ‘And just relish the experience. Make the most of it.’

  He did. He followed the movements of the squirrel for as long as it was in sight, and then he found a bird: a green-billed malkoha. It was fabulous, and it gave Brian his first chance to do a bit of active co-birding with his fellow Nature-seekers – and to start sorting them out in his mind.

  This was not going to be easy. The boat, back on the Brahmaputra, accommodated twenty-four guests, and had been chartered for the exclusive use of Brian and his fellow nature-nuts. There were therefore twenty-three people in the party, eleven couples and a single traveller. Brian’s minibus held twelve of them, but there was a second minibus, now drawn up behind his own, which held another eleven. These had been disgorged from this bus and were now mingling with Brian’s dozen to make a perplexing mêlée of individuals whom he still hardly recognised and whose names were still a mystery. No matter, he’d have a go. And why not with this lady here?

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Yes, I got a really good shot.’

  The lady he’d addressed, whom he later learnt was Pauline, the wife of Dennis, was now showing him the digital screen thing on her camera, the sort of camera Brian associated with photographers at football matches – when long ago he’d still had an interest in that sort of stuff. It had an enormous lens on it, and on the screen, an enormous picture of the green-billed malkoha. While Brian had been feeling smug that he had managed to clock this remarkable bird as it flitted between the branches, not only with his eyes but with his binoculars as well, Pauline had managed to take a bloody photo of it – and a photo that filled the whole of that screen thing. Brian felt suitably deflated – and mildly ridiculous again.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, but it was a wow without conviction. It was just as well his first encounter with Pauline was about to be drawn to an abrupt conclusion. It was time to re-board the buses. They had arrived at the gibbon sanctuary, but only at its edge. There was still a little way to go to the entrance, so it was back on the wheels again. And thankfully Pauline was on the other vehicle. It would give Brian more time to gather himself and develop a more cautious approach to his breaking-the-ice programme for the rest of the party. Like he’d take a good look at their cameras to start with…

  Within fifteen minutes both minibuses were parked in the sanctuary forest and the first of what would become a regular custom of the expedition to North-east India was underway: the early-morning mass-relief session.

  This was a fairly rapid affair for the gentlemen in the party as they were granted peeing rights within the forest. For the ladies, of course, it was a very different matter. The minibuses were parked next to a “rest house”, within which apparently there was a “rest room”. But only one. And with so many ladies, most of whom were wrapped around with webbing, camera-straps, binoculars and other safari-type paraphernalia which, for all Brian knew, might have to be loosened or even detached before things could get under way, the process of their discharging their rest room responsibilities was interminable. Had it taken m
uch longer, Brian would have suggested some improvised device of some sort. But, no, maybe he wouldn’t have. He’d have just thought about it and said nothing… And anyway, the enforced wait had given him all the time he needed to secure himself against leeches…

  They had all been warned about these little blighters the previous evening. So Brian had already swathed his feet in two pairs of socks. He had no great desire to repeat his experience in Madagascar. There, he had been well and truly sucked – and despite his spending an hour in a forest doing little more than studying his boots as he walked along, and being no less than meticulous in removing the leeches with his fingers as they arrived on his footwear, rolling them up, and then flicking them off. He still got sucked on his thigh. Which wasn’t quite as bad as Sandra’s suck. Hers was on her stomach. In neither case did they find the leech.

  But this was Assam, and Brian was very well girded and very alert. He had his Rohan trousers tucked firmly into his two pairs of socks and he had his mind tucked firmly into the avoidance of leeches. This time they wouldn’t get through. Even if it meant missing the odd glimpse of a gibbon in the distance. Oh, and he’d keep in the middle of the party as it strolled through the forest. Apparently the leeches went for the leaders and the stragglers, and those in between were rarely troubled…

  It worked. There were leeches about, but not too many. And a bonus: an easily visible family of gibbons – in what appeared to be a leech-free zone of the forest. Brian was even able to take some photos of them as they peered down on the strangers beneath them. They were western hoolock gibbons; two black males and a fawn coloured female with a young one in her arms. They were charming. Although he doubted they had the same opinion of their observers. They probably thought they were just rather odd, and that the tall one down there hadn’t even got a good covering of fur on his head. ‘He must be very old or very ill. And how does he attract a mate?’