Chapter 9 — Food Cart
And thus begins Chapter Nine.
Now, children.
There I stood.
Before the food cart.
Hungry.
Actually hungry.
A rare and beautiful development.
The council nods.
The people behind the stall looked friendly.
The menu looked diverse.
Vegetarian things.
Fried things.
Things on sticks.
Things whose names I could not pronounce but whose photographs suggested excellent decisions.
And so I approached.
The council watches.
Then the people behind the counter saw me.
Their faces lit up.
And they shouted:
“KERALA!”
The council pauses.
Children.
I stopped walking.
They continued.
“You’re back!”
The council turns toward me.
Uh.
What?
The council immediately becomes interested.
Apparently,
I had been here before.
The council erupts.
Children.
Not merely visited.
Not merely purchased something.
I was known.
Recognized.
Remembered.
They greeted me like a returning monarch.
One of them laughed.
Another pointed at me.
“The big spender!”
The council falls silent.
Sir.
What?
Children.
This was deeply concerning.
Because I possessed absolutely no memory of these people.
None.
Not their faces.
Not the cart.
Not the food.
Not being a big spender.
And given my current financial condition,
the phrase itself seemed historically inaccurate.
The council begins reviewing previous records.
Then realization arrived.
Agriculture.
The council nods.
Of course.
Somewhere inside those missing hours from yesterday,
apparently,
I had eaten here.
And forgotten.
The council writes:
Additional corrupted file recovered.
Now.
Before I could ask questions,
one of them said:
“Same order?”
The council waits.
Children.
I did not know what the previous order was.
A cautious person might have asked.
I nodded.
“Sure.”
The council applauds.
Commitment to the mystery.
A few minutes later,
they placed food before me.
Vegetable kebabs.
The council pauses.
Children.
Those are two words I had previously believed belonged to separate civilizations.
Vegetable.
Kebab.
Yet there it was.
And holy hell.
Glorious.
The council approves.
Apparently vegetables become considerably more cooperative when introduced to sufficient seasoning and fire.
I ate.
And as I ate,
the interrogation began.
Not theirs.
Mine.
“Wait.”
“I was here yesterday?”
They laughed.
Yes.
“How much did I eat?”
The council leans forward.
Six plates.
The council erupts.
SIX?
Children.
Suddenly,
several mysteries resolved themselves.
Why hadn’t I been hungry?
Because apparently High Nuo had consumed enough food to provision a small expedition.
The archivist had forgotten.
The stomach had not.
The council nods.
Then another question emerged.
A more important question.
“How did I pay?”
Because children,
I knew exactly how much money was in my possession.
And I could not afford six plates of anything unless the plates themselves were complimentary.
The men smiled.
The council becomes concerned.
“Pot.”
The council pauses.
Pot?
Apparently,
yes.
Children.
I had somehow entered into a barter economy.
Food was exchanged.
Agriculture was shared.
Diplomatic relations flourished.
The council applauds.
Ancient commerce restored.
And suddenly,
everything made sense.
Or at least as much sense as anything in Rishikesh had begun making.
I had eaten.
I had smoked with them.
I had apparently behaved generously enough to earn the title:
Big Spender.
And then,
my brain had deleted the entire afternoon.
The council nods.
Efficient archival management.
Now.
The surreal part wasn’t that I’d forgotten.
By this point,
missing pieces of time had become an unfortunate recurring feature.
No.
The strange part was how they treated me.
Children.
Royalty.
One man looked around.
There was no chair.
Then somehow
chair.
The council gasps.
Manifested from another plane.
Perhaps from the same dimension my Ghost Roommate inhabit.
But suddenly,
there it was.
A chair.
For Kerala.
The big spender.
I was seated.
My order was prioritized.
Everyone greeted me.
People laughed.
Someone remembered something I had apparently said yesterday.
I did not.
The council smiles.
Children.
There is something profoundly strange about walking into a place where strangers possess memories of you that you do not.
For them,
I was returning.
For me,
I was meeting them for the first time.
Two versions of the same encounter existing simultaneously.
The council grows quiet.
Perhaps that should have frightened me.
Instead,
I found it hilarious.
Because somehow,
even when my conscious mind was unavailable,
the Unbegun had apparently been making friends.
The council nods.
Background socialization enabled.
Now.
Food disappeared.
Conversation continued.
And naturally,
the next stage of hospitality arrived.
A joint.
The council sighs.
Of course.
Rolled.
Lit.
Passed.
I joined.
And once again,
agriculture reinforced international diplomacy.
The council applauds.
Then eventually,
I stood.
Said goodbye to my newfound old friends.
Promised probably nothing because promises are dangerous things while high.
And wandered back toward Odin’s Abode.
Now.
Later,
I sat in the rooftop cafe.
The familiar headquarters.
Cigarette smoke.
Travelers.
Dogs occasionally passing through.
And that’s when I met him.
The council leans forward.
A new gentleman.
Pleasant fellow.
Friendly.
We started talking.
Where are you from?
What are you doing here?
How long are you staying?
The ritual.
Children.
Conversation was easy.
He seemed nice.
Normal.
Possibly too normal.
The council becomes suspicious retroactively.
Eventually,
I asked:
“What do you do?”
He answered.
“Police.”
The council freezes.
Children.
Every internal alarm activated simultaneously.
POLICE?
The council erupts.
Now.
At this point,
I had enough agricultural material in my possession to make this answer deeply inconvenient.
But perhaps,
I thought,
he was traffic police.
Or administration.
Or something harmless.
Then he continued.
“Narcotics.”
The council goes silent.
Children.
I would like you to imagine the exact moment every drop of blood in my body attempted to leave through my feet.
Narcotics.
The council begins running in circles.
I smiled.
Casually.
Naturally.
Like a man with absolutely nothing suspicious happening anywhere in his life.
“Oh.”
The council applauds.
Masterful composure.
Inside?
Panic.
Absolute panic.
Then he said something worse.
The council braces.
Apparently,
he was staying in my room.
The council erupts.
MY ROOM?
Children.
The Ghost Roommate had finally been replaced.
By law enforcement.
The universe possesses an extremely specific sense of humor.
Now.
Immediately,
my mind began constructing scenarios.
Was this deliberate?
Had Sunglasses betrayed me?
Was the secret cafe actually an elaborate sting operation?
Was the hostel owner’s dog trained not to find customers
but suspects?
The council pauses.
Children.
Paranoia had taken the wheel.
Every interaction from the previous three days was suddenly evidence.
The dog.
Sunglasses.
The food cart.
The hippie clothes.
The fact that I now visually resembled a walking advertisement for cannabis legalization.
The council groans.
Perhaps subtlety had not been maintained.
Now.
The gentleman remained perfectly pleasant.
This somehow made it worse.
He smiled.
Talked normally.
Asked ordinary questions.
Children.
Exactly what an undercover narcotics officer would do.
The council nods gravely.
Or,
you know,
a normal human being.
We are not considering reasonable interpretations yet.
Now.
Night arrived.
Eventually,
everyone began returning to their rooms.
Including him.
My room.
The council looks toward the door.
Children.
Was I going to sleep beside a narcotics officer?
While carrying contraband?
Was I going to close my eyes and simply trust the justice system not to activate overnight?
Absolutely not.
The council erupts.
SURVIVAL INSTINCTS!
At last.
And so,
I slept on the common room sofa.
The council pauses.
That was your solution?
Children.
I did not say the instincts were good.
Only that they existed.
I curled up on the sofa.
Bag nearby.
One eye metaphorically open.
Listening for footsteps.
Imagining raids.
Arrests.
Interrogations.
Newspaper headlines.
KERALA MAN ARRESTED AFTER FOLLOWING DOG.
The council collapses.
A humiliating legacy.
Eventually,
exhaustion defeated paranoia.
I slept.
Then morning arrived.
The council leans forward.
And somehow,
somehow,
I awakened on a bench outside.
The council pauses.
Outside?
Outside.
How?
Unknown.
When did I move?
Unknown.
Did I sleepwalk?
Was I relocated?
Did the sofa reject me?
The archive contains no record.
Children.
Rishikesh had once again moved my physical body while my consciousness was unavailable.
At this point,
I had stopped being surprised.
Then I noticed someone beside me.
The council grows concerned.
The narcotics officer.
The council erupts.
HE FOUND YOU.
Children.
This was it.
The elaborate trap had reached its final stage.
I prepared mentally.
He sat beside me.
Calm.
Relaxed.
And smoking
a joint.
The council falls silent.
I stared.
Looked at the joint.
Looked at him.
Back at the joint.
Then asked:
“You smoke pot?”
The council applauds.
An investigative journalist.
He said nothing.
Simply handed me the joint.
The council becomes very still.
Children.
This introduced several new possibilities.
Possibility One.
He was not a narcotics officer.
Possibility Two.
He was a narcotics officer who smoked weed.
Possibility Three.
This was an incredibly elaborate test,
and I was about to fail it.
The council nods.
Naturally,
I took a puff.
The council collapses.
SURVIVAL INSTINCTS RETRACTED.
Immediately.
Children.
Even while convinced I was being trapped,
apparently refusing a joint remained beyond my capabilities.
I inhaled.
Passed it back.
Then sat there,
watching him suspiciously.
He smoked.
Calmly.
No handcuffs.
No dramatic reveal.
No hidden officers emerging from bushes.
Nothing.
The council waits.
Which made me more suspicious.
A perfect trap.
The council sighs.
There was only one sensible course of action.
Leave.
And so I did.
Immediately.
The council applauds.
I returned inside.
Took a shower.
Let cold water beat several layers of paranoia out of my skull.
Slowly,
sobriety returned.
And with sobriety came reason.
The council gasps.
Reason?
Briefly.
Perhaps he genuinely was a cop.
Perhaps he worked in some capacity I misunderstood.
Perhaps “narcotics” had been misheard.
Perhaps he was joking.
Perhaps the entire conversation had become distorted by the fact that I had spent several days smoking substances strong enough to remove entire meals from memory.
The council nods.
All plausible.
I decided I would ask him later.
Clarify.
Laugh about it.
Maybe learn his actual name.
Children.
I never saw him again.
The council erupts.
OF COURSE.
Gone.
Completely.
No follow up.
No explanation.
No closure.
One moment,
a narcotics officer was smoking a joint beside me.
The next,
he had vanished from the story.
The council writes:
Ghost Roommate Variant II: Law Enforcement Edition.
Now.
To this day,
I possess questions.
Was he actually a cop?
Did I misunderstand him?
Was the joint real?
Was he real?
Had my brain invented an entire narcotics officer because Sunglasses’ strongest product had finally achieved sentience?
The council considers this.
Evidence inconclusive.
Children.
Perhaps that’s the greatest mystery of Rishikesh.
Not spirituality.
Not the Ganga.
Not the hidden cafe.
That man.
Because I have no proof.
No photograph.
No name.
No contact.
Only a memory of a stranger calmly telling me he worked narcotics,
sleeping in my room,
and then passing me a joint the next morning.
The council grows quiet.
And somehow,
rather than being disturbed by this,
I remember thinking:
Gods.
I love Rishikesh.
The council erupts.
Naturally.
Thus concludes Chapter Nine.
The Big Spender.
The Six Plates I Forgot Eating.
The Agricultural Barter System.
And the Narcotics Officer Who May Or May Not Have Existed.
Children.
By this point,
Rishikesh had become a place where my own memories could ambush me.
Strangers knew stories about me I had forgotten.
People appeared,
became characters,
and vanished before I could confirm they were ever there.
Time disappeared.
Roads looped home.
Dogs gave directions.
And somehow,
through all of it,
I felt strangely comfortable.
Kasol had made the world feel larger than my sadness.
Rishikesh was doing something stranger.
It was making reality feel less rigid.
Less serious.
Less deserving of the death grip with which I usually held it.
The council listens.
Perhaps not everything needed to make sense.
Perhaps some things were allowed to simply happen.
A meal forgotten.
A friend remembered by strangers.
A cop smoking a joint.
A bench appearing beneath you sometime during the night.
Children.
Was I crazy?
Was the agriculture simply that strong?
Was Rishikesh genuinely this strange?
The archive refuses to choose.
But one thing remained certain.
Gods.
I loved this city.
