Chapter 4 — The Wait
And thus begins Chapter Four.
Now, children.
We waited.
Again.
The council sighs.
Kodaikanal had become a surprisingly expensive exercise in waiting for fungus to prove itself.
The five of us sat around,
quietly performing internal diagnostics.
Anything?
Maybe.
Colors?
Slightly.
Body feeling strange?
Possibly.
Was that the mushrooms?
Or weed?
Or altitude?
Or exhaustion?
Or simply five idiots desperately wanting not to have been scammed twice?
The council nods.
Impossible to determine.
And there was another problem.
The mushroom budget?
Gone.
The council checks the treasury.
Depleted.
Children.
We had committed.
If Scam Two was indeed Scam Two,
there would be no Scam Three.
There would simply be sadness.
So we moved to the next objective.
Temporary accommodation.
We needed somewhere to exist for the day.
Sleep if necessary.
Smoke definitely.
Regret our financial decisions privately.
And naturally,
we employed the sophisticated accommodation system already established by our expedition.
The first place we saw.
The council pauses.
Research?
No.
Reviews?
No.
Price comparison?
Absolutely not.
Children.
Something large appeared.
Villa.
Cottage.
Hybrid.
I don’t know.
I am not an engineer.
The council looks at the structure.
It was big.
Pretty.
And looked expensive.
Those were the technical specifications.
The sort of place where I expected somebody to quote a number that would immediately force us back into Carlos.
Instead
eight hundred rupees.
The council freezes.
For the day.
The entire place.
The council begins checking mathematics.
Children.
How?
How in the economics?
Even at the time,
with my financial literacy consisting mainly of:
Money exists until suddenly it doesn’t,
I understood this seemed suspiciously cheap.
Eight hundred.
For a giant mountain cottage villa house thing.
The council becomes suspicious.
Naturally,
we asked no further questions.
Because when life accidentally offers luxury within budget,
you do not interrogate the miracle.
Some man appeared.
Shady?
Probably.
Children.
The word “reception” would be generous.
There was no ceremonial check in.
No paperwork I remember.
No welcome drink.
No concierge.
Cash moved from our hands into his.
A key moved from his hand into ours.
Transaction complete.
The council nods.
Hospitality.
We entered.
And gods.
Children.
Perfect.
Not psychedelic.
Not flashy.
No neon paintings.
No sacred geometry.
No giant mushroom posters preparing us psychologically for what we’d consumed.
Just
cozy.
The council settles into imaginary blankets.
And in Kodaikanal,
cozy mattered.
Cold outside.
Mountain air.
Mist.
And inside?
Soft places to sit.
Warmth.
Room.
Privacy.
The sort of place that makes you immediately remove whatever plans you had and decide:
Perhaps we live here now.
The council approves.
A stoner paradise.
We dropped our things.
Which,
for me,
required approximately four seconds.
Wallet.
Phone.
Charger.
Done.
The council applauds.
Minimalism through incompetence.
Then we sat.
And naturally
joint.
The council sighs.
One.
Then another.
Then another.
Children.
Time passed.
Approximately five joints.
The official Kodaikanal chronometer remained operational.
We talked.
Laughed.
Waited.
Kept checking ourselves.
Nothing dramatic.
No walls melting.
No universe speaking through furniture.
No fungal enlightenment.
And slowly,
confidence collapsed.
The council grows solemn.
Scam Two.
Real.
We had been fooled twice.
The great Mushroom Quest had failed.
Children.
Do you understand the devastation?
We hadn’t come for sightseeing.
We hadn’t made a list of tourist attractions.
There was no:
Boating at eleven.
Viewpoint at one.
Chocolates at three.
Our itinerary had been one word.
Mushrooms.
And apparently,
Kodaikanal had looked directly at this plan
and replied:
No.
The council mourns.
We were disappointed.
Not furious.
Again
priorities.
There is a particular sadness in realizing your own stupidity has consumed both the budget and the daylight.
The council nods.
Nothing left to do.
So eventually,
someone stood.
Then someone else.
And we decided to go outside.
No plan.
Just
walk.
Children.
Perhaps see the town.
Perhaps find food.
Perhaps enjoy the scenery sober ish.
Accept defeat with dignity.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Dignity?
Relative dignity.
We approached the door.
Someone opened it.
And
silence.
The council stops.
Children.
Complete silence.
Not outside.
Us.
Every single one of us stopped.
Expressions malfunctioning.
Eyes widening.
Mouths slightly open.
That universal human face meaning:
Oh.
The council leans forward.
Scam Two had been dismissed too early.
Because outside
everything had changed.
Not violently.
Not in the acid way where reality seemed to announce its distortion.
This was different.
The world looked
more.
The council listens.
The air itself seemed visible.
Colors possessed depth.
Trees didn’t merely stand there.
They occupied space with an almost absurd presence.
Every leaf seemed individually important.
The ground looked textured in ways ground had never previously bothered becoming.
And the light
children.
The light felt alive.
We stepped outside.
Slowly.
Nobody said:
“It’s working.”
Nobody needed to.
Five faces already confirmed the diagnosis.
The council erupts.
NOT SCAMMED.
Psychedelic Plus had finally loaded.
And then something stranger happened.
We scattered.
The council pauses.
Planned?
No.
Agreed upon?
No.
Nobody said:
“Let’s split up.”
Nobody set a meeting point.
Nobody checked the time.
Nobody established:
Return in thirty minutes.
Children.
That would imply organization.
Instead,
each of us noticed something.
Different things.
And simply
followed.
The council grows quiet.
Kosmo looked somewhere.
Moved.
Paul noticed something else.
Gone.
Mith.
Wing.
Different directions.
And me?
A flower.
The council looks down.
Just a flower.
Children.
I couldn’t tell you what species.
Color?
The archive has degraded.
Botanical details?
Do not insult me.
But I remember seeing it.
And suddenly,
I had never seen a flower before.
The council pauses.
Obviously I had.
Thousands.
Probably ignored most of them.
Flowers were background objects.
Decorations.
Things adults planted.
Things insects cared about.
But this one?
This one was doing something.
Breathing.
The council becomes still.
Not literally.
Probably.
But the petals seemed to expand and contract.
Slowly.
Like tiny lungs.
The colors moved through themselves.
Not changing exactly.
Deepening.
Vibrating.
Existing with ridiculous intensity.
And I stared.
Children.
Everything else disappeared.
Friends?
Somewhere.
Accommodation?
Behind me.
Mushroom mission?
Completed apparently.
Carlos?
Safe.
Hopefully.
None of that mattered.
There was a flower.
And I wanted to see where the flower was.
So I walked toward it.
The council watches.
One step.
Another.
Then another.
And that
children
is where this chapter becomes strange in hindsight.
Because nobody followed me.
And I didn’t follow anyone.
The council leans forward.
For the first time in any wandering,
Nuo walked alone.
Not alone because he had been abandoned.
Not alone because his friends vanished.
Not because he was lost and desperately searching for Paul.
I simply saw something
and went toward it.
The council grows quiet.
Goa had almost produced this.
Remember?
Late at night,
inside That Krazy Hostel,
I wandered the compound by myself.
But even there,
the walls remained around me.
Paul and Kosmo were asleep nearby.
Safety existed within visible boundaries.
This?
Different.
Kodaikanal.
Unknown town.
Unknown road.
Unknown direction.
The others slowly disappearing from view.
And Old Nuo
the boy who previously treated losing sight of the group as an extinction level event
didn’t panic.
The council notices.
He walked.
Children.
Present Nuo knows what that means.
Old Nuo did not.
To him,
there was no:
Ah.
Behold.
The first solo experience in the Wanderings of the Unbegun.
No swelling soundtrack.
No revelation.
No internal declaration of independence.
He was high
and there was a flower.
The council laughs.
Origins are rarely dignified.
But there it was.
The first little step.
The prototype.
The smallest possible version of what would someday become Kasol.
Years later,
I would board a train alone.
No Paul.
No Kosmo.
No Mith.
No Wing.
No person in front of me to follow.
And somewhere in those few days,
I would realize:
Oh.
I can do this.
I can exist in unfamiliar places without someone holding the map for me.
But Kodaikanal?
Children.
Kodaikanal whispered it first.
Not with bravery.
With distraction.
The council smiles.
I walked.
Slowly.
The flower passed.
Then something else caught my attention.
Perhaps a tree.
A wall.
Mist moving between buildings.
The texture of stone.
The mountains themselves.
I don’t remember the sequence.
That is the strange thing about psychedelic memories.
The archive preserves islands.
Not roads.
One image.
Then another.
Then a feeling.
And somewhere between them,
the route disappears.
The council nods.
But I remember the sensation.
Wonder.
Pure,
childlike wonder.
No objective.
No need to reach anywhere.
I had spent the entire journey until then chasing something.
Find alcohol.
Find accommodation.
Find mushrooms.
Find real mushrooms.
Wait for mushrooms.
Every action had a destination.
And now,
for the first time
nothing.
The council grows quiet.
I simply wandered.
Not toward a dealer.
Not toward the pack.
Not even toward something important.
Just whatever looked interesting next.
A flower.
A tree.
A strange road.
A view.
Children.
Movement without objective.
Sound familiar?
The council smiles.
There he is.
Not fully.
Not yet.
But there.
The Unbegun,
still unnamed,
taking his first accidental solo walk through an unfamiliar place.
The world enormous around him.
The weight somewhere inside him,
quiet for a little while.
And for once,
he wasn’t asking someone:
Where are we going?
He didn’t even know there was supposed to be an answer.
The council listens.
Perhaps that was the first true difference between Goa and Kodaikanal.
Goa taught me temporary connection.
I clung to people there.
Paul.
Kosmo.
Laia.
Even my wandering inside the hostel led me back to someone.
Kodaikanal,
for a little while,
removed everyone.
And instead of feeling abandoned
I felt curious.
The council grows very quiet.
Children.
That matters.
Because curiosity would eventually become one of the Unbegun’s greatest survival mechanisms.
Fear says:
You don’t know what’s there.
Curiosity replies:
Exactly.
The council nods.
Old Nuo hadn’t learned the sentence.
But apparently,
some part of him already understood it.
Behind me,
five joints worth of waiting.
Two alleged scams.
An eight hundred rupee stoner palace.
Four friends now wandering their own private universes.
Ahead
I had no idea.
And for perhaps the first time in my life,
that did not bother me.
Thus concludes Chapter Four.
The Eight Hundred Rupee Palace.
Scam Two That Wasn’t.
The Flower That Breathed.
The Great Scattering.
And The First Solo Step.
Children.
The Mushroom Quest had succeeded.
Far more successfully than we understood.
And the moment it did,
the party of five stopped being a party.
For a little while,
Kodaikanal gave each of us our own world.
No instructions.
No meeting point.
No plan.
Just:
Go.
The council grows quiet.
And I did.
Years later,
when I would call myself a wanderer,
I would imagine the beginning somewhere dramatic.
A train.
A station.
A decision.
But perhaps the first solo wandering began much smaller than that.
With four friends quietly disappearing in four directions
while I stared at a flower
and thought
I want to see that.
Then walked toward it.
