Everything went wrong and right

📍Canacona, Goa, India (Issue 186)

Going north, passing the white beaches of Gokarna at sunset

I had heard that sitting under a banyan tree invites luck, so I rested against Shiva's sacred tree and reflected. Above me, a dozen thin trunks threaded themselves, ever narrowing, into countless flat, heavy green leaves; the uppermost were still catching the last of the day’s sun.

What a day! It had gone badly wrong, of course, but perhaps there was no other day to be had. It was deformed, like the hanging roots of the banyan. At first glance, the day was a disappointment. But like a parent who discovers their stupid child is a great artist, the day was a wonder, just not wonderful by my own design. Every plan, every inkling of preference, had been wrecked on the rocks of misfortune. This is what happened.

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At dawn, I packed to leave Calicut and began riding. Pulling up at a red light I heard the disconcerting sound of metal on metal. At that moment, I knew my day had changed irrevocably.

Months before, somewhere over the Alps, I damaged my rear spokes by de-railing my chain a dozen times. Carrying this injury on my bicycle and in my heart, I continued to live with a kind of "spoke anxiety", a persistent worry that I'd have some bleak mechanical failure a thousand miles from a reliable bicycle shop. Therefore, any sound of metal on metal, even the lightest tinkle of a key against my steel frame, sends me into a busy panic. I freak and search for the breakage. Flappable like only an overworked, underpaid school teacher can be, on hearing a crash, I rush to the noise: what's broken?…what's wrong?…what’s the matter…has someone fractured a leg…stop crying…David be quiet...Martha for god sake it's hardly a scratch…etc etc.

In this sole respect, I'm unusually sensitive.

I'm sensitive because my British bicycle wheels are abnormal, still round but slightly larger than the standard, and irreplaceable anywhere east of Suffolk or south of Brighton. A hangover, I suspect, from the days the British attempted to impose British standards on the rest of the world. In India, cars still drive on the left, following the British lead, but road signs read kilometres, not miles, and my wheel size is practically unknown. Finding a replacement for a spoke is so difficult that I once spent a day cutting and re-threading a new set of spokes in Kandy, Sri Lanka, which have since been laughed at as insufficient in quality by other mechanics (themselves of poor repute).

Anyhow, it was a shimmering dawn and the Arabian Sea was still calm but seemed to be preparing, with the help of a stiff onshore wind, to hurl itself all day against the sliver of sand which escorted the town’s promenade into the distance. On the promenade, I searched, hawk-like, for the sound of metal touching metal and saw under my pannier a jaunty spoke, out of line like a fainted soldier on parade. It had snapped under my excessive weight and that of my gear.

It was only six AM and the bike shop was not open until ten. So I loitered like only a bicycle tourist or homeless person can, gaze lost somewhere in the middle distance, hopeless to the decisions of The Universe. I attracted a pair of stray dogs and gave them the corner of my dosa. I think I read some pages of Orwell's The Clergyman's Daughter, and from it I remember Mr Warburton saying: "When I eat my dinner, I don't do it to the greater glory of God; I do it because I enjoy it. The world's full of amusing things — books, pictures, wine, travel, friends — everything. I've never seen any meaning in it all, and I don't want to see one. Why not take life as you find it?" But the mind fogs when it’s a long time waiting, and I was most likely obsessing about the mercury climbing up the thermometer.

I got to the bicycle shop at ten and it was closed. The shop was south-facing on the highway, and its roller-shutter door was already white-hot. I stood, arms crossed, helmet on, bicycle propped on the stand. An Indian man began a conversation. He knew of another shop that builds touring bikes. Touring bicycles! I could hardly believe my ears. They build Surly! (A particularly sexy model for touring). We walked together, wheeling my laden bicycle under the forever-sun, to the bicycle shop at a congested crossroads. The shop was also closed, so we waited some more with chai.

I remembered I had wanted to have completed sixty kilometres by the time the chai was poured. It was perhaps eleven AM. According to my odometer I had hardly done four, and none in the direction I wanted to go. My bicycle was out of order. I wasn't getting what I wanted, and I reliably got what I didn't want. The "wanting," of course, was my problem.

After some time the shop opened, and the service was impeccable. I could not have prayed for a better job. They checked my spoke tension and gave me better bicycle lights and a new pump. To pay, I was without cash, so I went to the local ATM.

So, I formed another plan. A simple plan: getting cash. Still, one which went wrong in every way.

I received a "Transaction Failed" error message from the ATM. I then looked for my bank card; it wasn't in the ATM. I only had one… it must have been eaten, I reasoned. So I went to the bank's headquarters, and they looked at me puzzled. “ATMs don't eat cards here,” they said, but I was confident. I told them so. More queuing, more waiting, more phone calls to engineers. I caused a big fuss.

With no card, what was I to do? At the last moment, I got my wallet out and looked inside and there — in plain sight — was my orange Monzo card: fluorescent, incandescent when looked upon and un-ignorable. I went cold and then red and then wondered if I should tell them or not, such was the rigmarole I had caused. The fuss. Surely I couldn't tell them! Could I run off? I considered it. What would the bank manager think? And those exhausted engineers sent at midday, in the heat, to check the machine? And the superior who had authorised the service? Rippling with shame, I walked up to the desk, embarrassed. I showed them the card, said sorry and thanked them, they smiled and I left. On my way out, I withdrew the cash I needed, and returned by dusty road to the bicycle shop.

I had been away for a few hours, not five minutes, but the mechanics were unconcerned. This kind of unexplained many-hour delay is common in India. And my bicycle was ready for me.

Still feeling like a fool I thought it would be amiss not to share my stupidity. If anything, it would be a good story. In front of my bicycle, which was begging to ride some kilometres, I told them of my trip to the ATM, my thinking that the bank card had been eaten, my going to the headquarters, the fuss I made, the calls, the brouhaha, the bustle.

Then, in the excitement of telling the story, I re-enacted getting my wallet out. Acting as if to check it, I looked inside and found my card was missing. I, again, turned cold. Then red. Where the hell was my card? I explained I needed to return to the bank headquarters to find it. The mechanics laughed. I rushed out. What are the bank clerks’ going to think of me now? In any light, and especially in this uncompromising tropical sun, I would look stupid.

So, again, I took to the dusty roads, crossing intersection after intersection, having lost my card for the second time, turning up to the bank headquarters twice, claiming they had my card. I, with not a little shame, asked them if they’d found it. They hadn’t but agreed to look around, so a bigger scene was made than I would have liked with plenty of shouting, none of it in English, so I hate to think what they were saying about me… there was a frantic rummaging and some phone calls. Then, from the back of the gloomy office, a security man waved that fluorescent orange Monzo card and held it high in the air. The room looked at it, then at me. I had left it in the ATM after collecting cash. I took the card, apologised and returned to the bicycle shop.

It was now mid-afternoon, and the sun was on its way down. I had a repaired bicycle, cash and my bank card. Riding once again, I made my way to my hostel, but took the wrong turn and arrived at an antique shop that looked similar and was on the same street.

Feeling certain some cosmic hand had brought me into this frowzy, dank antique shop, I walked barefoot across the dusty floor, deep into the interior where there was almost no natural light. The only sound was the creaking of the boards under my feet. I browsed paintings of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig, of Bismarck riding into Paris, an oil-on-canvas seascape of Kanyakumari, a child’s rocking horse with platted mane, some porcelain from China and a library of leather books surrounding a mirrored mantelpiece in which I glanced at myself, but I seemed to vanish, hardly a shadow. I walked on, past a row of Swiss hanging clocks beside two grandfather clocks, all ticking together precisely.

A moment later, I found myself sitting in a heavy leather chair, holding a cup of sweet chai. Opposite me, over a wide banyan desk, sat the owner of the collection, Mr Basheer. He told me he used to work in Dubai, and for the last forty-five years he's been travelling and adding to his collection. Everything here was for sale, but I sensed little was bought. He was bald, his eyes were deep and thoughtful, and his glasses were large and slipped down his nose as he spoke. Behind him, on warped paisley wallpaper, dozens of picture frames hung, all different sizes.

"Do YOU like the art in here?" He said, dwelling on the word ‘you’, and gesturing to the rear wall.

"Very much," I said, only then starting to absorb the images. In one, a mountain pass was crossed by a solitary hiker; in another a young Western child played in an English garden. One showed the gaunt and haunted face of a much older man, grey-bearded, in a deep blue Tibetan tunic. Hanging centrally on the wall was a young man crossing Egypt’s east desert on a bicycle at sunrise.

"Each piece of art in this room is a moment of YOUR life, Hector, future and past."

I had not yet told Mr Basheer my name, nor anything of myself. I leaned forward, placing my elbows on the desk and looked closer at the wall behind him. All the paintings and drawings, some in oil, some in ink or watercolour, some canvas or framed paper, contained a boy or a man. Now that he said it, the person featured was unmistakably me: pale, tall, a heavy, cumbersome baby, an awkward adolescent, somewhat stooped later on, periodically bearded or wearing a suit, his hair crisp white from middle age onwards.

"You know how my life will turn out?" I asked.

“It’s already painted! Would you mind if your life turned out just like today?" He said.

"Well, today has not gone to plan! I broke a spoke, I lost my bank card…"

"You should NEVER expect it to go to plan. Whose plan? YOUR plan? Today has been PERFECT.” Mr Basheer smiled at me; I noticed profound warmth in his eyes. He continued, “Even if it's all gone wrong from your perspective, from another perspective it’s an immaculate day. Today has been today. Tomorrow will be tomorrow. Don't go holding on to anything; let it pass you by; let go.”

I said nothing. What could I say?

After a long pause, Mr Basheer nudged his glasses up his nose, rocked back in his chair, and said, “Hector, did you decide to be born?"

I said I had nothing to do with my parents' meeting, nor their parents' meeting. I said I didn’t decide to be born.

"You don’t get to decide anything, not even to BE,” said Mr Basheer, “and nothing is as fundamental as that. Everything in your life comes out of it.”

Mr Basheer pointed at a small charcoal drawing of an unsmiling man in a heavy overcoat. He continued, “That’s an ancestor of yours. It was drawn in 1832. He was an Irish politician who had an illegitimate daughter with his servant. Can you imagine the DRAMA? I can remember it.”

I vaguely remembered this story of an ancestor, but still couldn’t grasp how he knew.

Mr Basheer continued, “Hector, I can tell you it looked like a supreme ERROR at the time! But, it was also perfect because you wouldn’t be here in Calicut without his indiscretion. Everything happens because it must happen. We only know about good because of evil, of right because of wrong. We can only conceive of ‘up’ because we know of ‘down’. We can appreciate light because we know of darkness. It all comes together. It’s ONE. Can you have left without right? Of course not. Fortune is fortune, whether it’s misfortune or good fortune. It’s a matter of perspective. Whether things go well or not, it's all story-telling. There is no plan to keep, no route to follow, so relax, submit and surrender. There is nothing else to do.”

I was about to ask how this mysterious Mr Basheer knew everything of my life, where the paintings came from, and so on, but at that moment the clocks in his collection began to chime simultaneously.

It was six. “We’re closing,” said Mr Basheer, "it's about time you get going, before it gets dark." He pointed to a painting of Calicut with that unmistakable promenade beside the blue Arabian Sea, still warm with the sunset. Painted among the traffic was man riding alone on a bicycle.

I walked closer to the frame, and shaking Mr Basheer’s hand, I stepped effortlessly into the painting. And from there I continued riding my bicycle north, towards the hostel with the banyan tree, leaving the surprising encounter behind and forgetting my warm chai on his desk.