A Box to Maya’s Place
In the Monsoon heat I carried the cardboard box down the hill from the flat to the small Post Office in Happy Valley. I was leaving Hong Kong. That afternoon Gorge had called me into his office to ask me to stay on for another year, but I had given fair notice, the school year was ending and I was moving on.
I didn’t exactly know where I was going.
I had an idea I would return to Thailand, spend some time in a woven palm frond hut on the beach in Koh Phangan, then go to an ashram somewhere in India.
After a year working in Hong Kong, I had far too many clothes to fit into a carry-on bag. That was my travel rule then. No checked bags. My colleague Maya had invited me to her family home in Srinigar in the Himalayan foothills if I was going that way. “Come see the mountains. Stay with us. Bring winter clothes because it is cold in the highlands in winter. Colder than here.”
So that afternoon in the heat of a Hong Kong June I was carrying a box labelled with my name in care of Maya’s family address, filled with woollen sweaters, warm boots, and a fine woolen shawl from Pakistan that had been a gift from a student’s grateful mother.
After palm fringed beaches, turquoise water and a soft coconut wind, I left Koh Phangan and returned to crowded, polluted Bangkok to apply for a visa at the Embassy of India. It was on the other side of the city from the small family-run guest house where I always stayed when I came back to Bangkok. The first time I arrived at the embassy, it was closed for lunch. Not wanting to wait for three hours outside in the heat, I flagged a tuk-tuk, one of the small Thai transports with a motorcycle at the front and behind that a small cab like a rickshaw for passengers. Sweating and dusty, after a couple of hours in Bangkok traffic, I returned to the cool, quiet guesthouse.
The next day, I returned to the Embassy of India, to find it was closed for three days for Indian holy days. Once again, I returned through clouds of diesel fumes, honking horns and chaotic traffic. The cool, quiet guesthouse folded around me, a shady oasis.
For a brief moment, I thought of going back a third time to the Embassy of India. Instead, I bought a ticket to Kathmandu instead of Mumbai. I didn’t need a visa for Nepal.
As for the box to Maya’s place, I never saw it again. I think of the fine gray woollen shawl with some regret, waiting for me like karma, an unfinished journey. (465 words)
Janis