Chapter 4 — The Tag
And thus begins Chapter Four.
Now, children.
There I stood.
North Cliff.
Ocean ahead.
Sunlight dancing across the water.
Waves breaking below.
The sort of view that makes a person want to contemplate existence.
So naturally
I smoked a cigarette.
The council sighs.
Tradition.
Children.
Some men meditate before beautiful scenery.
Some pray.
Some breathe deeply and become one with nature.
I introduce nicotine.
The council nods.
Balance.
I stood by the railing for a while.
Smoking.
Watching the water.
Still slightly stunned that this place had been sitting in Kerala my entire life
and I had simply
not come.
Then,
somewhere between one wave and another,
I looked down.
At my hand.
More specifically
my wrist.
The council leans forward.
The bracelet.
Children.
By now,
it had become more than a bracelet.
Bone tags hung from it.
Four.
Four little relics.
Four Wanderings.
Four places reduced into small objects I could carry forward.
The council counts.
Goa.
Kodaikanal.
Kasol.
Rishikesh.
And now
Varkala.
The council notices the empty place.
Quest acquired.
FIND THE VARKALA BONE TAG.
Children.
There it was.
The old ritual.
No wandering was complete without one.
Not because anyone had established a law.
There was no official constitution of the Wanderings.
No council decree.
No sacred text saying:
THOU SHALT ACQUIRE BONE TRINKET.
I had simply started doing it.
And once Nuo accidentally creates a ritual,
children,
the ritual becomes law.
The council nods solemnly.
I looked left.
Stairs.
Leading downward.
Toward the beach.
The council points.
Potential quest.
Future quest.
Not now.
Then I looked right.
The council turns.
Stalls.
Shops.
Vendors.
Trinkets.
The council rises.
IMMEDIATE QUEST.
Excellent.
For the first time since arriving,
Varkala began behaving like a wandering.
I finished the cigarette.
Started walking.
And children
this path was strange.
Beautifully strange.
To my right:
shops.
Clothes.
Jewelry.
Little statues.
Bags.
Souvenirs.
Objects whose purpose appeared to be convincing tourists that they desperately needed objects.
The council nods.
Capitalism.
To my left:
nothing but cliff,
air,
and ocean.
The council grows quiet.
And that combination did something to me.
Because stalls weren’t new.
I had walked through markets before.
Kasol had them.
Rishikesh had enough trinkets to bankrupt anyone with poor impulse control.
Which,
children,
was concerningly relevant.
But Varkala placed the market beside infinity.
The council listens.
One moment,
I’m inspecting some little necklace.
Turn my head
ocean.
A shopkeeper calls out.
Turn
ocean.
Rows of colourful objects.
Turn
endless horizon.
It was like somebody had built a marketplace along the edge of the world.
The council approves.
I walked.
And began asking.
“Do you have these?”
Wrist raised.
Bone tags displayed.
The first shopkeeper looked.
No.
Fine.
Next.
I walked.
Asked again.
No.
Next.
Nothing.
Children.
At first,
I wasn’t worried.
These things had appeared throughout the previous Wanderings with suspicious consistency.
Maybe not always immediately.
But someone had them.
Or knew someone who did.
Or pointed vaguely toward a place where they might exist.
The world had always cooperated with the ritual eventually.
So I continued.
Shop.
Ask.
No.
Shop.
Ask.
No.
Another.
Nothing.
The council becomes concerned.
Children.
A problem emerged.
Bone tags,
apparently,
were mythical creatures.
The council pauses.
But you have four.
Exactly.
And based on previous experience,
I had assumed they were just
around.
Like cigarettes.
Or tea.
Or men offering substances when you look sufficiently unemployed.
The council laughs.
But Varkala disagreed.
Nobody had them.
Worse
many people didn’t even know what they were.
I showed the bracelet.
Pointed.
Explained.
“These.”
Blank face.
No.
Another shop.
No.
Another.
Still no.
The council opens the quest log.
FIND BONE TAG.
STATUS:
CATASTROPHE.
Children.
Most reasonable people would eventually accept defeat.
Perhaps Varkala simply doesn’t have one.
Buy something else.
A shell.
A little anchor.
A miniature surfboard.
Something ocean related.
Assign symbolism afterward.
Perfectly respectable.
The council looks toward me.
But I am not most people.
I am the Unbegun.
The council groans.
And more importantly
the ritual had already become too old to negotiate with.
Four tags.
Four Wanderings.
I was not returning home with an incomplete wrist.
Absolutely not.
So I searched.
Properly.
Every shop.
Children.
Every.
Single.
Shop.
The council settles in for a long campaign.
And for once,
I possessed an extraordinary advantage.
Language.
The council gasps.
Communication unlocked.
Children.
This was Kerala.
My territory.
No broken English.
No elaborate hand choreography.
No holding an object in the air and hoping facial expressions would complete the sentence.
I could actually speak.
Properly.
Explain what I wanted.
Describe it.
Ask if they knew another shop.
Ask where these things came from.
Ask whether somebody further down the cliff might sell them.
The council applauds.
The Unbegun had unlocked dialogue options.
And gods,
did I use them.
Again.
And again.
And again.
“Do you have something like this?”
“No.”
“Know anywhere that does?”
“No.”
Next.
“Have you seen these?”
“No.”
“Anybody around here sell them?”
“No.”
Next.
Children.
By approximately the millionth explanation,
I could probably have delivered the Bone Tag Presentation professionally.
The council watches my sanity erode.
Still,
I continued.
The ocean remained beside me.
The shops kept appearing.
And slowly,
the original quest became less:
Buy souvenir.
And more:
Prove this object exists in Varkala.
The council nods.
Pride had entered.
Dangerous.
Then
a man looked closely.
The council leans forward.
Not the usual glance.
He actually examined the bracelet.
Picked up one of the tags perhaps.
Looked at the carving.
The material.
The shape.
And said something useful.
Finally.
“These look Tibetan.”
The council freezes.
Tibetan?
Bone tags.
Tibetan style bone tags.
The council erupts.
NEW INFORMATION ACQUIRED.
Children.
Suddenly,
the entire quest changed.
I had been searching incorrectly.
I was asking random souvenir shops for an obscure object
when I should have been looking for the ecosystem the object belonged to.
The council updates the mission board.
OLD OBJECTIVE:
FIND BONE TAG.
NEW OBJECTIVE:
FIND SHOP THAT SELLS TIBETAN SHIT.
The council pauses.
Technical terminology?
Perfectly.
And with that
movement resumed.
Now I wasn’t looking inside every shop with equal hope.
I was scanning signs.
Displays.
Prayer flags.
Buddhist imagery.
Handicrafts.
Anything that whispered:
Potential bone tag habitat.
Children.
And the funny thing?
It didn’t take very long after that.
The clue had solved the map.
I walked.
Looked.
Passed another shop.
Another.
Then
there.
The council looks up.
A sign.
Tibetan Handicrafts.
The council goes silent.
Children.
Subtle.
Very subtle.
I stared at it for half a second.
Then practically rushed inside.
The poor shopkeeper probably thought a man had just discovered shelter during a cyclone.
The council laughs.
I entered.
Looked around.
And on the wall
them.
The council rises.
Bone tags.
Children.
Rows of them.
Hanging.
Waiting.
The mythical creatures existed.
The quest marker exploded into golden light.
The council erupts.
RELIC CHAMBER FOUND.
I approached.
Started going through them.
One.
Another.
Different carvings.
Different symbols.
Different shapes.
And now came the important part.
Not just any tag.
The Varkala tag.
The council nods.
This is impossible to explain scientifically.
There is no selection formula.
No checklist.
No:
Must contain ocean symbolism.
Must match local architecture.
Must receive seven or more points on the Souvenir Relevance Index.
Children.
I simply look.
And eventually,
one feels right.
That’s it.
The relic chooses the idiot.
The council accepts this ancient law.
I picked through them.
Until
there.
One.
The council grows quiet.
That one.
Why?
No idea.
Perhaps the design.
Perhaps the feeling.
Perhaps after walking past an unreasonable number of shops,
my brain simply declared:
This is the object.
But I knew.
Varkala.
I took it to the man.
Paid.
Children.
Budget status?
Critical.
But rituals outrank economics.
The council sighs.
Then came another memory.
Rishikesh.
The old tea woman.
The council smiles.
Children.
Remember her?
The elderly woman at the chai stall.
Barely a shared language between us.
Two hours of conversation somehow occurring anyway.
The woman who had taken my little relics
and shown me how to tie them properly onto the bracelet.
Her method had stayed.
Of course it had.
The road teaches strange skills.
And sometimes,
you don’t realize they are skills until another road asks for them.
The council watches.
I sat or stood there
archive uncertain
and worked the new tag into place.
Using the same method she had shown me.
Thread.
Loop.
Tighten.
Secure.
The council grows quiet.
Four became five.
The Varkala tag joined the others.
Not replacing anything.
Not competing.
Just another little piece of road
hanging beside the roads that came before it.
The council smiles.
Goa.
Kodaikanal.
Kasol.
Rishikesh.
Varkala.
Five Wanderings.
Five relics.
And children,
there is something satisfying about a physical object clicking into the mythology.
A wandering can feel temporary while you’re living it.
You arrive.
You walk.
You leave.
Days collapse into memory.
But the tag?
The tag says:
No.
This happened.
You were there.
The Archivist approves.
I looked at my wrist.
Mission complete.
The council checks the quest board.
FIND VARKALA BONE TAG.
COMPLETE.
RELIC ACQUIRED.
ATTACHED USING RISHIKESH GRANDMOTHER PROTOCOL.
SUCCESS.
Children.
I had been in Varkala for barely any time.
Already spent half my budget on an auto.
Walked enough shops to establish an independent retail census.
And somehow found the exact obscure little object I had convinced myself the wandering required.
Perfect.
I stepped back outside.
The ocean returned immediately.
Of course it did.
Still there.
Still enormous.
Still reflecting sunlight like nothing important had occurred.
But something had.
The council looks at my wrist.
Varkala had entered the Archive.
Now.
Remember the stairs?
The council turns left.
Down toward the beach.
Children.
The immediate quest was complete.
Which meant
the future quest had just become present.
But that is for the next chapter.
Thus concludes Chapter Four.
The Fifth Bone.
The Mythical Souvenir.
The Tibetan Clue.
And The Rishikesh Grandmother Protocol.
Children.
I came to Varkala because I wanted an answer.
Then I stood on the cliff and found awe.
And before going any further,
I did what the Unbegun always does when a place begins becoming part of him.
I found something small enough to carry home.
The council looks at the bracelet.
Four became five.
Relic acquired.
Mission complete.
And the sea still waited below.
