The Week India - July 29, 2018

70 THE WEEK^ • JULY 29, 2018

COVER STORY

TRAVEL

wards, her guru, a self-assured Indian named Dr

K. Sunil Chandran, asked me how I felt. I lied that I

felt a lightness and walked out with my indigo-less

consciousness.

I met another healer-cum-bartender-cum-wait-

er from Bengal called Anthony at the nearby

Darjeeling Café. He led an itinerant lifestyle and,

during the season, travelled to Goa and Mumbai.

When I enquired about the alcohol that the café

(another misnomer) served, he asked whether I

preferred “holy water” or “drinking water” and

said in a stage whisper that alcoholic beverages

were called “drinking water” to fool the police

who came for inspections. He stayed in Varkala

for the sake of “love and peace” and had a disturb-

ing habit of winking after everything he said, as

though to punctuate his humour in case we didn’t

get it. He seemed to be one of those men who took

great eff ort to make his jokes appear eff ortless, and

probably thought the world a failure if he didn’t try

to make it funny.

Later, a yoga teacher from Delhi called Shyla

M.K. took a session of sunset yoga on the beach for

me. I tried to keep my body loose and my dignity

fi rm—both proved elusive. Shyla was very glam-

orous and treated her beauty with an appealing

carelessness. She quit corporate life and became

a yoga teacher after she saw a man puffi ng away

on a treadmill in her Delhi gym, his eyes glued

to Arnab Goswami’s rhetoric on television. “I

decided to change course because I didn’t want

to become a machine,” she said.

Th e next day, as our car sputtered its way

home, life seemed sepia-toned, full of new

possibilities. Th en we hit the highway, and I left

behind the sea-smells and the asphalt dreams.

Th ere seemed to be an unreality to the babas and

the weightlifters, like they had walked out of a

Tinkle Digest. Anthony’s “love and peace” started

looking like paperback clichés. Life once more

settled into the groove of looming deadlines and

bad hair days.

SANJOY GHOSH

Anthony is a

healer-cum-

waiter-cum-

bartender

from Varkala

who keeps

winking after

everything he

says, as though

to punctuate

his humour.