Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
chessmen, upon polished trays of brass. The Indian dinner-hour
trade was in full swing.
Finally, we were back on the ghats, walking north a few yards
from the river, through pockets of deep, fetid mud. No wonder
Amar's Reeboks were in such a state. Not far from the main ghat, as
I well knew, stood the dom raja's palace. Huge, square, like a medieval
keep, this edifice rose up windowless and almost featureless to a
walled neo-Moghul balcony, behind which rose several more
extravagantly zany structures some fifty feet above water level. The
only evidence of its owner's lofty status was two life-size tigers with
sparkling glass eyes sculpted from concrete, gaily painted in high-
gloss, and perched as if on guard at either end of this hectically
creative balcony. To the building's right side, at ghat level, a steep,
narrow flight of stone steps led vertically up to the only visible door.
An unusually hard-bodied, muscled youth wearing only obscenely
skimpy bathing trunks was running up these steps as we arrived.
Instead of proceeding through the stout door when he reached the
top level, he began running back down.
'My brother,' Amar said, languidly waving an arm at the burly,
sweating figure bouncing powerfully toward us.
'Exercise?' I inquired.
Amar shrugged as if he did not care.
I nodded to the brother as he drew near.
'Sorry,' he gasped as Amar and I edged against the frail wall to let
him pass.
'In training?'
'Olympics,' he spluttered, reaching ground level and springing
around there energetically before starting back up the steps behind
us.
'Which Olympics?' I inquired, as he bounded past again.
'Olympic G-G-Games.'
'Oh.'
'It is some . . . this thing,' Amar explained helpfully. 'Athletical
sportings, you know?' He didn't sound as if
he
knew.
His brother had already ascended and descended the seventy-
degree staircase three times when we paused two-thirds of the way
up for Amar to get some oxygen back into his viscous blood. This
