A mutilated beggar appeared at my taxi window. He seemed no more than a teenager, but it was hard to see past the heavy scarring on his face. Half his lower jaw was missing, teeth exposed. Both arms ended like sausages just below the elbows. A small wooden box hung on a string around his neck. With his stumps he thumped the glass, again and again. His voice was slurred, but youthful and polite. “Excuse me, sir. I am crippled. Please help.” I saw his tongue working in his ruined mouth. “Rupee? Dollah?”
 
“Pay no attention,” said my driver, Ramesh, in his thick Marathi accent. I turned my eyes forward, the traffic picked up, and we left the beggar behind.
 
As far as I knew, we were heading south along the western edge of the island that is the city of Mumbai. This was late November, but the heat was like a huge sweaty hand pressing down. Buildings, vehicles, people, noise, even the air gave a sensation of density, the definition of congested. Soon we reached a highway that curved along the sea and a weight inside me lifted. A horizon, blue meeting blue. And light. Big, wide, the tinge of lazy that says late afternoon. Something I could recognize, even if barely. The tiniest bit like the open sky of southern Alberta, back home.
 
We were on our way from the Kohinoor Continental, my hotel near the airport, to the Colaba district, the peninsula at the southern tip of Mumbai. Colaba was recommended as a place for good food, entertainment, the arts, a westerner-friendly attitude. I had a mission to fulfill, but that didn’t start until tomorrow. For one evening, I could relax.
 
I’d been working for a software company in Toronto for five years since college, my clean-cut, good-Mormon-boy persona perfectly suited to climb the corporate ladder. But my girlfriend had just dumped me for being that very person, boring. I wasn’t feeling wonderful. So when my boss got sick and his boss offered me this trip to India to negotiate code outsourcing, I was happy to go.
 
Colaba was bustling, of course. We crawled along the crowded streets past the National Art Gallery, a roundabout with a fountain, a historical “mujeum” as Ramesh put it, a cineplex showing Fahrenheit 9/11, Around the World in 80 Days, and Basic Instinct, a McDonald’s, and various banks, cafés, stores, offices, who knows what else. I had a map and intended to walk, so I said goodbye to Ramesh at the Gateway of India and was immediately accosted by an old man in a saffron robe who insisted with hand signs and rapid gibberish that I receive a thread around my wrist and a dab of red paint on my forehead, for which he earned ten rupees. I gave another ten for the silence of her supplication to a teenage girl carrying a baby. After that I shook my head No to every request, like waving a hand in a swarm of gnats. 
 
The arch and the plaza were impressive, as was the Taj Mahal across the street—not the famous ancient monument to love, hundreds of miles to the northeast in Agra, but its namesake, a huge Edwardian-era luxury hotel. Today was November 26, 2004. In 2008, on this very day, this building would be bombed by Pakistani terrorists in a city-wide attack planned in part by an American spy who played both sides.
 
I walked through the crowded blocks around the Taj Mahal. Windows displayed Louis Vuitton handbags and dirty-faced children begged for food. The sun set and the western sky glowed turquoise as I found myself at Leopold Cafe, a well-known hangout for expats, tourists, and the locals who like them. I decided to have dinner.
 
The big dining room was crowded and noisy but a little cooler, and I was able to get a small table alone. I ordered a bottle of water and a plate of tandoori chicken that arrived quickly with a side of fresh greens, some of them unidentifiable.
 
Of course I couldn’t know that four years later, ten people would be murdered and many more injured in this very room. As I ate, I glanced around at the faces. I could easily have been in a Toronto cafe, but something was a little off, an element of surrealism under it all. I was on the other side of the planet, after all; shouldn’t everything be backward? I remembered a few hours earlier, in my hotel lobby—as I was checking in, and again later when I was arranging the car service, a middle-aged Indian man sat at a boat-like organ made of black wood, serenading the guests. He played “Danny Boy” with a machine-made maraca beat. Then it was the Godfather Theme with a waltz rhythm and an organ trill in every pause. “A Kind of a Hush” had funky bass and hi-hat with fancy vamping and oo-la-la keywork. Then it was a melodramatic “Sunny.” A western hit parade gone loony. Dressed-up people streamed by me; saris of every color. Then I saw the sign: “In the Emerald Room, Hanish weds Elvina tonight!”
 
Dinner tasted good. Afterward, I stood on the sidewalk outside Leopold’s and just stared at the busy scene, the noise and congestion, electric-lit civilization shredding the darkness under a silent night sky. The heat had faded a bit since sunset, but I didn’t dare take a deep breath because the air was polluted. I had begun to feel strangely sluggish, as if my muscles just didn’t want to move. Jet lag, I thought. And why was I so thirsty? As people and traffic streamed past, my attention was drawn to the brick wall of the building I found myself leaning against. A lovely, delicate fern had emerged from the mortar and was waving gently in the air. I hadn’t seen it there before. I doubt if the proprietors want weeds growing out of their wall, I said to myself, and I reached to pull it out. It must have been of such fine structure that I wasn’t seeing it properly, as it completely escaped my grasp. I tried again and again, but I couldn’t grab the fern. It didn’t move, yet it eluded me every time. I was angry. “Dammit! Go to hell then!” I yelled at the wall. Then I turned and walked away up the sidewalk.
 
Passers-by looked straight ahead, but occasionally one would glance at me. Or rather, the face, already so foreign, would continue looking tranquilly forward while at the same time it would do something no face had ever done before: a copy of itself, a second face, would twist to stare at me. Directly at me alone. Every stare was full of disdain, even disgust. A lip would curl, a nose wrinkle. Eyes were wide or squinting, seeing something ugly. Was I so obvious an outsider? Did I have no right to be here? I could only turn my own eyes down to the ground and keep walking.
 
From every crack in the sidewalk a lacelike fern was growing. My tongue was a thick cotton ball. My legs were tree trunks, the effort to move them becoming just too much.
 
I could walk no more. I sat on a low wall near the sidewalk. Everything seemed thick and heavy. I sat there like a part of the wall, a stone. People strolled past, cars honked, all perceived dimly, through thick, smoky glass. 
 
After a time I can’t define, both forever and a moment, I became aware of something on the sidewalk. Down there among the wispy weeds was a dollar bill. A faraway voice said “Dollah?” With slow, slow movements, like pushing through thick mud, I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the dollar. I reached, grasped, but no, it wasn’t in my hand. I tried again, and missed. And again. What was wrong with my eyes? Or my hands? I could see the bill clearly but my fingers could not find it. Feet passed. I heard whispers, hisses of scorn. I raised my head enough to see faces turned and fingers pointed. Suddenly I was full of shame—me, on the ground, grasping for a dollar. I tried to stand up but my muscles refused to obey—refused with pain. I was paralyzed. Stuck in concrete. This was more than I could take. “Help!” I yelled, but it came out as a hoarse croak, surely too quiet to be heard. “Help! Help!” I was struggling with all my strength, but I could not move my body nor raise my voice. “Please!” Tears stung my eyes. 
 
“Please!”
 
I don’t know how long I writhed on the ground in pain. I only remember a kind face. A sadhu without the gauntness, a man in shirt and pants of loose linen, with a long graying beard and hair piled up in a topknot, with a gentle smile and cheerful eyes. It seems he helped me up and into the back seat of a car.
 
For hours and hours, through the night, I rode in that capsule of calm and kindness, but time was swallowed by psychosis. On the back surface of the seat in front of me, tiny people in peppermint-striped uniforms climbed up and down ladders. They seemed to be painting a house or washing windows. A guy from work, whom I barely knew, crouched like a small child on the floor of the car, making jokes that I laughed at loudly but could never remember. A branch of a peach tree hung down from the ceiling and I attempted to pick the rosy peaches, but grew frustrated when they slipped through my grasp. The bearded stranger beside me smiled even as I told him long stories about people I had known in high school—the football star, the prom queen—told him as if he knew them by name. 
 
He gave me water from a bottle to ease my cottonmouth, and I was grateful. Later, when I got out to pee by the side of the road, my father the Mormon bishop was standing beside me. We had never pissed together, side by side. I liked it. Back in the car, I insisted on seeing myself in the rear view mirror. I wondered if I looked different, since my mind had changed. The driver, a young brown-skinned man, twisted the mirror for me to look, and the only part of the face that made any impression on me was the eyes. They had no irises. The pupils were so enlarged the eyes looked like black holes. I learned later that I spoke to the image as if to another person: 
 
“Man, you look bad. Get it together.”
 
As the sky grew pink on our left and the sun began to rise I saw palm trees and empty fields on both sides of the road. Occasional low structures, no city buildings. I was beginning to feel normal again, and I attempted a friendly conversation with my companion.
 
“Look at those monkeys with little hats and vests, jumping around under the trees,” I said.
 
 His face looked tired, but he gave me a kind smile and a shake of the head. “There are no monkeys there,” he said. 
 
“Oh.” I returned to gazing out the window, and after a time I said, “Look at those monkeys with little hats and vests, jumping around under the trees.” 
 
Again he replied, “There are no monkeys there,” and immediately, with a rush of embarrassment, I remembered: we had already been through this.
 
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just said that, didn’t I?”
 
“If you remember it, I think you’re on the way to recovery,” he said. That’s when I realized he was speaking perfect North American English.
 
“What happened to me?”
 
“I think you’ve just been through an experience with datura. I take it you didn’t ingest the stuff intentionally?”
 
“Definitely not. What is datura?”
 
“It’s a hallucinogenic plant, a flower that grows just about anywhere. Big white blossom, sometimes called moonflower. I’ve heard about this, a new type of anti-American or anti-European activism. Feed the white oppressor a taste of nature’s magic, make him go crazy—something like that.”
 
“Wow.” I couldn’t quite take it all in. I think I slipped back into a trance for a while, staring out the window at the passing landscape, a tropical paradise. When I looked again, he was asleep. Suddenly I realized I was exhausted. I closed my eyes and lost consciousness.
 
In my dreams, this insanity never happened. I dreamed a whole life. From country child to city adult. I flew to Mumbai, gave 50 rupees to the beggar at my car window, had a successful meeting, flew back to Toronto. My girlfriend decided she still loved me, we married and bought a nice house in the suburbs, I got a promotion at work, then another one; she had a successful real estate career. We had two daughters who soon went to school and before long, with both drama and comedy, were beautifully grown up, dating, in college, then having children of their own—children who bounced on my knee and before I knew it, became adults. Every moment of all the years was fully real in all its dimensions, internal and external. And then I was an old man, sitting in a recliner in my living room, wondering how it had all happened so fast, so fast I couldn’t grasp it, I could never really catch hold, my life slipped past, it just slipped past like a dream, like the dream it actually was. 
 
When I awoke, I was on a narrow bed in a tiny, drab room. Sunshine through a window cast palm frond shadows onto the stucco wall. I looked at my watch, but it was a total blur. My eyes refused to focus. I stood up and was immediately dizzy. I stumbled to the door, through a small, cluttered kitchen, and outside, squinting in the dazzling sunlight. There in a low chair on the sandy ground was my benefactor, shirtless, his paunch tanned by the sun, relaxing with a glass of something brown and creamy. His dreadlocks were unraveled and would have dragged the ground had they not been looped over the back of the chair.
 
“I’m blind!” I said.
 
“Don’t worry, it’ll wear off by this afternoon.” He smiled up at me. “Welcome back to the real world.”
 
“What time is it? I’m supposed to be at a meeting.”
 
“It’s around eleven or so. I don’t think you’ll make that meeting.”
 
“Where the hell are we?”
 
“Have some iced coffee and relax. In a bit we’ll go down to the beach.”
 
I sat heavily in a chair near his and put my head in my hands. “Oh man, this is bad.”
 
“It might be the best thing that ever happened to you. You can’t know just yet, can you?”
 
“Really, where are we? And who are you?”
 
“You can call me Shiv. And we’re at my home, in Anjuna, in the beautiful province of Goa, in the Republic of India.”
 
“Do you know what happened to my cell phone? I’ve gotta make some calls. Is there a landline here? I’m expected to be—”
 
“Too late. I never saw your phone. It’s gone. Embrace the change, my friend. Breathe.”
 
I obeyed. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His feet were bare on the ground. I peeled off my penny loafers and socks and curled my toes in the sand. Then I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and let the sun bathe my face. I imagined its rays were healing my sight.
 
“What should I call you?” he asked.
 
“Bradley Reed.” It sounded flat and strange to my ears. “BR will do.”
 
We sat in silence. With eyes still closed, I said, “So you’re American?”
 
“New York boy gone wild,” he chuckled. “My destiny brought me here. Of all places.”
 
As I leaned back and breathed, and let the sun make brilliant red mandalas on the inside of my eyelids, a seed of possibility was planted. It felt so good to relax.
 
A little later, I traded my blue Oxford long-sleeve button-down for one of Shiv’s t-shirts. The day was hot. I wasn’t yet ready to cut off my khaki slacks, but that day would come before long. We walked a mile or so to South Anjuna Beach and had breakfast at Curlie’s Beach Shack. Tables crowded under a thatched roof, open to the small beach and the vast, brilliant horizon. Waves rolled in with unceasing, hypnotic rhythm. A few girls in bikinis sunbathed on lounges. People seemed to just be waking up, but they all wore friendly smiles. The vibe was sleepy and laid-back, bathed in the warmth of the sun, cooled by the fresh ocean breeze. I wasn’t very hungry but I munched on some shrimp and fries as we sat side by side, silent, staring at the sea. This was all so new to me. What would happen next?
 
I can’t say exactly what was the turning point. Maybe it was the delicious, perfect emptiness of this day, or maybe it was the night. After Shiv and I napped during the afternoon, we came back to the beach as the sun was setting. Now it was something entirely different. A bonfire blazed on the sand. Under Curlie’s roof, neon colors in psychedelic patterns pulsed with the constant driving throb of rave music, and a crowd of people danced like one organism with a thousand arms and legs. Again and again, sweet and pungent herb smoke wafted past my nostrils. Tan skin and long hair and crazy-hued scanty clothing mixed and swirled like a paint palette in perpetual motion. For a long time, I just watched. Then I joined in.
 
Did I know then that I would never return to my former life? I can’t say. As the days went by, then the weeks, I met Shiv’s friends, people who welcomed me without question. People from a dozen countries, learning to speak each other’s languages. We cooked healthy food together and jammed around a fire on the beach. I learned to drum. My hair grew long, my skin brown, my feet tough. I discovered how it felt to, as someone said, “fog the mind, stir the soul.” And, with the help of chemistry and plants—teacher plants, but not datura, never again datura—to go beyond the fog to clarity, to sparkling visions of other possibilities, a universe without end. I fell in love.
 
I am no longer that conservative Canadian boy. Every cell in my body has been replaced, and I am grateful. I tell Shiv frequently how much I appreciate his kindness, his willingness to pick up a madman off a Mumbai street and treat him like a brother. And the years have been good to me in many ways. But still, for a fleeting moment every single day, I see the eyes of the mutilated beggar boy. I hear his broken voice say, “Excuse me, sir….” If I had been brave enough to roll down the window and slip 50 rupees into his box, just a dollar, would everything be different today? Would I have had that other life, the one I dreamed in the car on that crazy dawn all those years ago? 
 
Maybe. Or maybe I actually did live that life, lived it fully, there in the timeless in-between, and now I am living this one. A dream, just another dream.
 
 
© Brent Robison 2021
 
Mumbai Dollah was originally published in Otherwise Engaged Literary and Arts Journal in the summer of 2021.