These Days Just Slip Away
Chapter Four: Oh, It Hurts To Be This Good
By: Jondy Macmillan
Right before we leave India, we go to a temple.
It's called the ISKON Sri Sri Radha Sri Krishna Chandra Temple. If that sounds familiar; rings a bell like those you hear at airports, I wouldn't be surprised. It's a Hare Krishna temple. My parents and Mrs. Broflovski want to go there on a tour a few days before we were due to leave.
Obviously Kyle and I band together, if only to talk about how much this is going to blow. Even Kyle with all his cultural lovin' isn't big on the Hare Krishnas with their orange robes and bare heads and promises of heaven on earth.
We take a tour, and we have to start at the very bottom, where the temple doesn't look impressive in the least. Our guide from the place makes us do everything proper like, handing us laminated cards that read 'Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.'
None of us know what to do with the cards until we get in line for the temple. There the tour guide explains that we aren't in a line, per se, but a prayer line. There are stone slabs laid out on the ground. Each time a person steps forward, they're supposed to step on a stone, like musical chairs. On that stone, the person is supposed to rehearse the lines on the prayer card we'd been given.
It's ridiculous. You're supposed to say the whole hare hare thing like fifty thousand times. Half way through Kyle and I are making up our own rhymes; well, until Sheila Broflovski slaps us both upside the head.
There's another tour group from the US, small and full of girls. I hear one say that she doesn't like this kind of brainwashing and that it's making her uncomfortable.
I think that's kind of rude. I mean, sure, the whole thing is funny, but it isn't like they're trying to convert us. They're just trying to show us what their temple is about, the same way when we went to Hindu temples they taught us how to pray, to hold our hands over the fire and then run them through our hair as a blessing.
Anyway, the girl shuts up when we got to the end of the line, and that was only because she has to exert herself going up the millions of steps that lead to the actual temple.
Let me tell you, it's beyond worth it.
I'm not big on scenery or landscapes, or saying something's breathtaking, but this place; yeah, it is.
Huge white walls like a fortress stand before us, gilded double doors leading in and out of the place in the four compass directions. Inside there are people, everywhere; I've never seen so many people in one building, even at hockey games.
They're sitting on the marble tiled floor, praying, talking, staring. Our tour guide is telling us that the ISKON temple feeds thousands every single day and is completely philanthropic, but I've tuned out. There are pictures of Krishna in different stages of his life hanging above my head. In the week and a half I've been here, I'd figured out that Krishna was always portrayed as a blue guy, sometimes with a flute. He isn't a god so much as an avatar of a god named Vishnu, which all the people I'd met pronounced Wishnu.
Brown people and the 'v's? Not so much.
It's kind of funny to get them to say vanilla vodka though.
Anyway, these paintings show Krishna as a baby, Krishna dancing with his lover Radha, being surrounded by women, and a bunch of other things. He's supposed to be like the consummate lover, like the Kenny McCormick of back-in-the-day.
Thinking about Kenny makes me think about Kyle's confession, which I've been carefully avoiding all week.
I try to concentrate on the temple instead. Those doors I talked about are all flung wide, and we're on the top of a hill- guess all those stairs had to be good for something. Outside the city sparkles, lights and shadows and luminosity. The sun is beginning to set, the sky blazing puddles of blue, orange, sugar pink, and red like splashes of blood.
And I'll admit it. My breath's kind of stolen away.
When we leave the main room, the bright, sunset streaked magic for dark tunnels leading down through the hill to a faraway exit, Kyle and I ditch the familials. Mrs. Broflovski's voice is loud enough to disrupt even the most steadfast prayers, and even Kyle wants to put distance between his mom and him.
I, of course, agree.
The dark tunnels give way to alleys filled with candles and people pushing wears; malas, like rosaries, pictures of Krishna and Radha, statues and candles and incense. There are laddoos; sweet confections rolled up in balls that you're supposed to buy for the many statues of Krishna, as an offering. Kyle and I buy some to eat ourselves, which is all kinds of sacrilegious.
At one point, we're standing in the midst of the candlelit temple, weaving through men wearing white lungis wrapped around their knobby knees and tiny waists and robust women in saris with sweat stains beneath their arms, the scent of jasmine heady in the air, and the scenery a flickering, glowing dreamscape. I see a little girl, huddled at her mother's side, as thin and angular as a boy. She can't be more than twelve, if that. Her hair is short and black as an oil slick. Her skin is gold and brown, and shimmers like burnt milk in the firefly light. Her eyes are huge, rimmed with thick kajol, and luminous. They're a blue that is both electric and milky, like the afterimage of a firework on the back of your eyelid. I stare, because I can't help myself. Because I've never known that somebody's eyes could be so entrancing; that the beauty of an underfed Indian girl's eyes could be so majestic, and so terrifying.
She sees me looking and smiles, the perfect childhood gap-toothed smile. She opens her mouth, and from it spills music, nonsensical to my ear. The only word I can discern is 'Krishna' and I can only assume she's referring to the temple and not my creepy stalker stare.
There's hot breath in my ear, and I feel Kyle's lips turn into a smile as he murmurs, "She said you have beautiful eyes."
"You speak Indian now?" I ask, tearing my gaze from the girl for an instant.
"It's Kannada," he draws back from me, turning to full geek mode, "And the tour guide told me."
Sure enough, I see the tour guide leading our parents away in the crowd. I look at the girl and mouth 'thank you', because what else do you say when the person with the most hauntingly gorgeous eyes you've ever seen tells you that your own are nice? If anything, her smile gets wider.
It's weird how things stick with you. As we finally emerge from the winding maze inside ISKON, the afterimage of candlelight pressing into my brain, I just know that I'm going to remember that little girl until I'm ninety, but I'm not sure why.
It stops seeming important after a while.
I'm not sentimental. At all.
But the plane ride home is one of the saddest trips I've ever taken. I don't want to leave India, the vibrant color and sound and way of life that makes South Park seem a pale shade in comparison. The only plus, as far as I can see, is going back to Token and Clyde, whom I haven't even been able to send a postcard to because it costs some twenty five dollars in postage. I'm looking forward to sitting in Clyde's living room, banging back beers and playing Call of Duty again, which is how all three of us had originally planned our summer going, back before my dad decided our family needed some third world education. It's weird though; as much as I'm looking forward to it, drinking and playing video games with my two best friends doesn't hold the same appeal it did at graduation. I feel like there's more we could be doing, seeing, living.
Kyle sits next to me on the voyage back, because his mom changed their flight to match up with ours. It's a small mercy. I was supposed to sit next to my sister, who's constant brittle banter about which celebrity is banging which and how much she misses her many admirers back home has been grating on my last nerve. That's the one bad thing about family trips; too much family time.
Anyway, Kyle's asleep through most of the flight, having gotten a head start on the tiny bottles of liquor they pass out at snack time for a small added fee. I think he stole them out of the stewardess's cart when she came rolling by.
He snores away on my shoulder like this is the last good sleep he's ever going to get. I don't know if he's just an alcoholic in training or if he's terrified to see Kenny and Stan in person again. I'd bet on the latter; even though he called both of them pretty much every day while we were all the way across the world, hearing their voices and seeing them are two entirely different things.
I feel for him. Really, I do. I don't get how he could be so fucking confused that he falls for his two best friends. That's not the kind of thing that happens to people I know. The most drama we ever got is Bebe Stevens getting trashed and passing out on someone's lawn during our graduation party.
It must really suck to be in Kyle's position, and I'm glad- horribly so, that I'm never going to be there.
I can't imagine liking Token or Clyde that way, even though they're both pretty much the funniest guys I've ever met. They're both handsome too, the kind of handsome that has girls practically swooning at their feet in feeble attempts to catch their attention.
I mean I'm an attractive guy- stop laughing, it's true.
I'm attractive, but Clyde's on our football team, which pretty much makes him Park County royalty, and Token's rich as fucking hell, which equates to the same damn thing. Plus they both have charisma, something they've explained involves not flipping off every obnoxious girl we meet. I can't help it; it's instinct.
Kyle shifts on my shoulder, making this pathetic little noise like a dog or a little kid or something, and I groan. I can't believe he's drawing me into this thought process where I have to worry about all his problems. A couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have wasted a spare thought on the kid.
Traipsing across another country with a guy will do that to you I suppose.
Out the window it's a sea of blue, and I wonder if things really will change when I get home, or if they'll be exactly the same as I remember. Imagine if we never had to go back, Kyle had said at that club. It seemed idiotic when he said it, but now I get what he means. I want things to stay the same, sure, but another part of me is holding my breath, waiting for change.
If this trip has taught me anything, it's that change opens many doors.
But it closes them too, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.
A/N: Alright, super short chapter, and I'm sorry for taking so long to update. But, much as this chapter seems like filler, the ISKON temple bit is going to come into play many chapters later, so remember it! Please review!