Chapter 6 — Cow
And thus begins Chapter Six.
Now, children.
There I was.
Somewhere.
The council pauses.
A precise location?
Absolutely not.
I had awakened to a moo.
Opened my eyes.
Cow.
Then
another moo.
From behind me.
The council slowly turns.
Another cow?
Children.
Worse.
Context.
Because as my brain reconnected to reality,
I discovered something rather important.
I was not on my mattress.
The council goes silent.
No cursed room.
No Sharky.
No Axe.
No decorative air conditioner.
No fan moving at the speed of continental drift.
I was
on the back of a bullock cart.
The council erupts.
A what?
Children.
A cow powered vehicle.
Actual bovine transport.
Somewhere between passing out beside my girlfriend and dealer
and waking up in the morning,
University Nuo had apparently unlocked
medieval fast travel.
The council stares.
I sat up.
Looked around.
Bullock cart.
Confirmed.
Cows ahead.
Confirmed.
Road beneath.
Confirmed.
Everything else?
Unknown.
The council immediately opens an investigation.
What happened?
No idea.
Who put you there?
No idea.
Why were you there?
No idea.
How far had you travelled?
Children.
No.
Idea.
Eleven years later,
the file remains corrupted at precisely the most useful section.
Liquid.
Hostel mattress.
Darkness.
Cow.
The council flips through empty pages.
Nothing.
Children.
I have interrogated memory.
Memory has invoked its right to remain silent.
So there I was.
Apparently alive.
A promising start.
I checked my phone.
Dead.
The council sighs.
Naturally.
No battery.
No maps.
No calls.
No internet.
No convenient little blue dot informing me exactly how catastrophically far from Bangalore I had travelled while unconscious.
Excellent.
I climbed off the cart.
The council watches carefully.
Did the cart driver object?
Archive unclear.
Was there even a driver?
Probably.
Children.
The only thing I remember with confidence is:
Bullock cart.
Moo.
Exit.
Then I stood on the road.
Looked around.
And asked the most important question of the morning.
Where the fuck am I?
The council nods.
Now.
There were signboards.
Good.
Civilization.
I approached.
Read them.
The council leans forward.
Kannada.
Children.
This provided one useful piece of intelligence.
Still Karnataka.
The council applauds.
Detective work begins.
But
not the Bangalore I remembered from yesterday.
No city chaos.
No festival.
No blue neon pub.
No traffic that looked like Bangalore traffic.
This was rural.
The council looks around.
Road.
Small shops.
Fields perhaps.
A quieter world.
The exact geography has vanished.
And children,
I did not know Bangalore well enough to answer an important question.
Does Bangalore have rural parts like this?
Obviously the greater region does.
Present Nuo knows cities have outskirts.
University Nuo?
He possessed two categories.
Bangalore.
Not Bangalore.
The council laughs.
And the current environment was refusing classification.
So perhaps I was still technically somewhere in Bangalore.
Perhaps not.
Wonderful.
I checked my pockets.
Because children
when geography fails,
inventory.
The council opens the menu.
Phone.
Dead.
The council marks it useless.
Wallet.
Present.
Money inside.
Enough that I probably would not starve immediately.
The council nods.
Good.
Cigarette packet.
Three cigarettes.
The council approves cautiously.
And
four joints.
The council goes silent.
Children.
Relief.
Lost?
Yes.
Phone dead?
Yes.
No idea where the university was?
Correct.
But could still get high.
The council collapses.
PRIORITIES.
Inventory continued.
Lighter.
Present.
The council writes:
SURVIVAL STATUS:
QUESTIONABLE.
INTOXICATION CAPABILITY:
FULLY OPERATIONAL.
Children.
University Nuo felt significantly better.
Not safe.
Not informed.
But equipped.
There is a difference.
Now.
I needed information.
And coffee.
Possibly coffee first.
The council nods.
Some protocols are older than mythology.
I spotted a tea stall.
Small.
Local.
The kind of place where someone behind the counter knows every road for twenty kilometres because every person passing through eventually asks him something.
I walked over.
Sat.
Ordered coffee.
The council pauses.
Tea stall.
Coffee?
Children.
Do not start.
Coffee arrived.
Warm.
Necessary.
I took a sip.
Then asked the man:
“Brother,
where is this place?”
The council leans forward.
He answered.
A name.
Kannada.
The council waits.
And?
Gone.
Children.
He told me exactly where I was.
My brain received the information.
Processed none of it.
Then discarded it forever.
The council groans.
ARCHIVIST NOT INSTALLED.
Correct.
I stared at him.
Tried a simpler question.
“Bangalore?”
He looked at me.
Then said:
“Train.”
The council pauses.
Train.
Children.
A clue.
A glorious clue.
Because if Bangalore required a train
the council begins drawing diagrams.
I was no longer in Bangalore.
The council erupts.
CASE SOLVED.
Children.
I should start a detective agency.
Sherlock Holmes had deduction.
I had:
Man says train.
Therefore not here.
The council applauds ironically.
Still.
It was something.
I had left Bangalore.
Apparently.
How?
Bullock cart?
Train?
Teleportation?
A complex combination of alcohol,
bad judgment,
and livestock?
Unknown.
But I was somewhere outside the city
with no functioning phone.
Which introduced another problem.
Contact.
The council becomes serious.
I couldn’t call Axe.
Couldn’t call Sharky.
Couldn’t call faculty.
Couldn’t call anyone.
One
phone dead.
Two
children,
I knew nobody’s number by heart.
The council pauses.
Not even one?
No.
Not even my own.
The council collapses.
Modern civilization had made memory optional.
Numbers lived inside the phone.
Phone died.
Human network vanished.
The council nods grimly.
I could have walked into a telephone booth with infinite coins
and achieved absolutely nothing.
“Who would you like to call?”
Children.
I don’t know the numbers.
Fantastic.
So I sat there.
Coffee in hand.
Somewhere in rural Karnataka.
And thought:
What the actual fuck happened last night?
The council grows quiet.
A reasonable question.
One that remains unanswered.
To this day.
Children.
There are mysteries in the Wanderings.
The man who walked into the sea in Goa.
The missing hours.
The occasional stranger whose existence feels like something dreamt rather than lived.
But this?
This is one of the largest blank spaces in the Archive.
I remember going to sleep at the accommodation.
I remember Axe and Sharky beside me.
Then
cow powered transportation.
The council stares.
There should be an entire chapter between those events.
There isn’t.
History simply cuts.
Maybe I woke up drunk.
Maybe wandered.
Maybe boarded something.
Maybe someone helped me.
Maybe several events occurred that would explain all of this perfectly.
Children.
I do not know.
And I refuse to invent them now just because eleven years later the missing footage annoys me.
The council nods.
Archive law.
We preserve the holes too.
So I ordered another coffee.
The council approves.
Because one coffee was insufficient for this level of mystery.
I drank slowly.
Thought.
Nothing returned.
No sudden flashback.
No:
Ah yes,
I remember stealing a bullock cart.
Nothing.
Just static.
Eventually,
I accepted the uncomfortable truth.
Understanding last night would not get me back to Bangalore.
Movement might.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
Remember where we are chronologically.
This is before Goa.
Before Kodaikanal.
Before Kasol.
Before the Unbegun knew he could navigate unknown places alone.
University Nuo did not possess confidence in solo travel.
He possessed dependence.
Friends.
Groups.
People who knew things.
And suddenly
none of them.
The council notices.
No Paul.
No Kosmo.
No Sharky.
No Axe.
No functional phone.
Just me.
Some money.
Three cigarettes.
Four joints.
A lighter.
And one vague piece of information:
Train.
The council leans forward.
The earliest solo wandering had just begun.
Not voluntarily.
Not poetically.
Not because I wanted independence.
Because somehow,
I had misplaced the entire university.
The council laughs.
Origins remain humiliating.
I finished the second coffee.
Paid the man.
Then
children
before leaving,
I pet the cows.
The council pauses.
Of course.
They had participated.
Whether they had transported me the entire way
or merely happened to be the vehicle I woke upon,
they were now supporting characters.
Pat.
Scratch.
Thank you for your service.
The council nods solemnly.
Then I asked the general direction of the railway station.
The man pointed.
Or explained.
Enough that my brain acquired one useful vector.
That way.
The council smiles.
Children.
No map.
No phone.
No city knowledge.
No exact location.
Just a stranger pointing toward a train station.
And for the first time in the chronology of the Wanderings
Nuo walked alone through a place he did not know
because there was nobody else left to follow.
The council grows quiet.
Not yet brave.
Not yet curious.
This was survival.
Find station.
Find Bangalore.
Find university.
Find Axe.
Find Sharky.
Preferably before anyone noticed I had vanished.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Optimistic.
Very.
I lit a cigarette.
The council sighs.
Naturally.
Pocketed the rest of my inventory.
Looked down the road.
And started walking.
Children.
The earliest recovered solo step was not toward a flower.
Not toward a cliff.
Not toward some hidden cafe.
It was away from a bullock cart
in an unnamed part of Karnataka,
with a dead phone in my pocket
and absolutely no explanation for how I had gotten there.
The council nods.
Perfectly on brand.
Thus concludes Chapter Six.
The Moo.
The Cow Powered Vehicle.
The Dead Phone.
The Inventory Assessment.
The Coffee Investigation.
And The First Great Question Of Bangalore:
What the actual fuck happened last night?
Children.
Eleven years later,
I still cannot answer it.
But University Nuo did something surprisingly useful.
He stopped trying.
Finished his coffee.
Pet the cows.
Asked where the station was.
And walked.
Because when the past refuses to explain itself,
sometimes the only available direction
is forward.
