A Blog for Cherie

I honestly don’t know Cherie. But during the preparations for the trip, I had asked around a lot of questions about Badrinath & kedarnath. I must say, that I got a lot of replies. Most of them said that I was an idiot. Some of them said that I was especially an idiot for thinking of doing this trip by driving the car myself. Most of the remaining were evenly divided into mails advising me about a new strip joint in Las Vegas & the fact that more then a hundred thousand women were waiting to marry me in India alone.
Among these piles of mails, I found a mail from Cherie. With the subject “Badrinath”. This seemed by all purposes, to be a mail about a stripper in Badrinath who wanted to marry me.
“Finally”, I said to myself, “Something positive about the whole trip.”

But that was not to be. It turned out that Cherie had gone out to Badrinath sometime back & wanted to know if I could pass on a letter to her friend there. Immensely disappointed & totally forlorn (if such a term is allowed to exist), I wrote back that I would be most glad to oblige. After all, I would not be denied the pleasure of living vicariously the scandalous affaires of a Sadhu & a tourist. A depraved sort of a person I am, I admit.

But that was not to be either. She sent across a highly coded message which sounded like a letter anyone would write to anyone. Letters with more sexual flavor are written & printed as open letters to the Indian prime minister in the “times of India”. The letter was for a chap called “Guddo” who was in a shop just across the bridge at Badrinath.

Armed with nothing more then a perverted mind & a printout, I had set out on a 1000 Km drive 4 days back. Finally at the end of such distance & such time, I found myself at the Bridge at Badrinath. Epic & momentous occasion it was. Yes very dull life I lead.

After the Aarti & darshan of god, I went looking for him. And found him with surprisingly less difficulty. He looked a bit taken aback. As you would be if a fat man in a red jacket suddenly accosted you on a cold morning with a warm sun. The guy looked a total ruffian. I am trying to dig up his snap, but in the meanwhile, please accept my say so. He had not shaved, wore a bandana on his head, some yellow colored sweat suit & sauntered along the railing with a slouch & a leery expression chewing some paan. I immediately liked him. He is exactly the kind of guy, who makes out with women all the time. & even if they haven’t done so in the past few minutes, will have no hesitation to tell you about an incident which could have possibly happened if they weren’t busy doing some distasteful activity like talking to you.
As there were a lot of women around, I didn’t want to waste his time. I told him about Cherie who had wanted me pass on a letter to him. No recollection. I told him about a few more facts. Yes recollection. His entire face lit up with this recollection, till it focused on my drooling & anticipating face. Then it crumpled into a sober face & he said,
“But we only had dinner.”
Obviously the two of us held differing opinions on “dinner” because over the next half an hour, he repeated the sentence about half a dozen times. In that time frame, all the friends mentioned in the letter were summoned & all of them solemnly seemed to swear that they only had dinner.
It was admittedly a most entertaining half hour. Guddu turned out to be “Vijay” who was distraught at the falling religious sensitivities of his fellow Indians. He mourned the fact that more foreigners bought the Prasad thali’s from his stall then Indians did. All the Indians seemed to be interested in these days was sex & some violent sex. I nodded sympathetically & made those “Tchh…” noises from the corner of my mouth, that I am very good at. I took my leave of guddu, but not before he gave me three packets of Prasad & I promised him to send our snap to him by post.
I have since sent him his snap. I have also sent a mail to Cherie saying that I have sent her Guddu his snap. But Cherie’s mails keep bouncing back. She has left her job.
In my imagination, I very clearly see her coming back across the oceans, to the Bridge at Badrinath, where I hope, fervently, she will have something more then dinner this time.