Thursday, April 21, 2011

April Fool's Joke Conspiracy Foiled by Facebook


 
It’s not often you can credit Facebook for keeping you on track, but it happened to me.

Countless afternoons of being carried on the wings of whims, hungers and a search for the cheapest place to get a decent coffee had extinguished my reliance on a wrist watch, let alone a calendar. I’d been keeping a lazy eye on the date via my computer but somehow I’d managed to not notice that it had been April 1st for about 4 days straight.  It was a tasteful April Fool’s joke, I suspect, caused by a power surge that fried my laptop battery.

Then a status update by a friend who I was supposed to meet on the 5th of April in Istanbul read: “In a few hours I’ll never have to listen to Korean pop ever again”.  

A few hours? A few days maybe….

A stranger, huffing a giant hash joint at the table next to me, confirmed the date.  It was April 4th already. I had about 14 hours to get to Delhi to make my plane.  Oops.

Naked, covered in ash from human cremation, carrying a human skull, and impossibly surreal, an Aghori walked in my direction as I hastily exited the coffee shop.  This was, I assume, an extension to the April Fool’s joke being played on me by the cosmic forces.  I’d been searching for these guys since I arrived in India. In my final, rushed hours, they passed me by. India is a playful place and jokes at your expense are frequent.

Minutes later, all that I own has been collected from my hotel room and stuffed into a bag on my back. I’m on a bus before I can even turn around to say good-bye to Rishikesh…this place that I really loved.

Run to the bus, then an auto-rickshaw to the airport, the 10 hour journey is complete.  4 hours to spare. Thanks for everything India.  Really. 







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