real east | must reads

Hampi, South India

Found memories, often return when I least expect them.

   I had woken suddenly with a criminal hangover in a middling English city on a single mattress soaked in blood, sweat, tears. Every part of my body was in pain, even my toenails. A throbbing temple felt so sharp; I opened an eye half expecting to meet a chisel. My body felt as empty as a mind that had been obliterated by the lure of Friday night: too much drink, chase, need. All the excess all at once, until the black nothingness of consumption swooped in to take away what was left of my senses. I was twenty-four and nothing mattered, the way nothing does when young enough not to care.

Dry mouth took me back to an unexpected place. A need for water reminded me of dust clouds I’d walked through months earlier on a blowy day in Hampi, South India. In the years that followed my first trip far east, whenever my mind felt tormented by poor choices that led to severe consequences, I would often return to a spiritual place of culture and virtue—before doing something stupid once again.  

But in a place of ruins that was once the capital of the Vijayanagar Empire things were different. In a past dating back to the 7^th century, for a few precious days of an Indian summer, I awoke inside a once fortified city. One built in dedication to Hindu deities—of which it turns out, there are several. I liked the deity Brahma, the creator, most. He sprang from a cosmic egg and created light and dark, good and evil. At the time of reading about Brahma, I thought how cool it be to have four heads and be the originator of good and evil. I don’t know why. Maybe it is something about destiny, or perhaps having some sort of power no one else can have.

Anyway, on arrival, Hampi appeared wide open to high winds and relentless rainfalls that would raise the Tungabhadra River and flood a muddy embankment with green waters come monsoon season. Hampi attracted adventurous travellers, athletic boulderers and hippie expats who dressed in sandals and light, colourful clothing you’d get yelled at for wearing back where I called home. People from faraway places, arriving with tired eyes and heavy backpacks and bum bags in search of peace, also came ready to walk dirt roads and climb rocky hillsides at dawn to climb, meditate, pray. The pilgrims came to worship and be enlightened. It’s funny how quickly routines of people become typical in a place where those who came before us had fought and died for a place of faith.

I found those driven by a devotion felt for something intangible to fight, conflicting at the time—even if moved by craftmanship seen everywhere. For weeks after my time in that sacred place, whenever I was messing up in an ordinary life full of boredom and excess; memories of India came in the colours of Diwali: mustard yellow, vivid magenta, pure blue.

The monuments and temples stood tall. They sort of looked like skyscrapers risen above shack housing. Both in the past advanced and superior for their time, but also in the present ancient, near crumbling. Monkeys lazed on walls that rose among giant stone boulders dotted among parched brown and green rising land. Sometimes, I would watch those monkeys creep along the walls and across mud hut roofs towards market stalls selling fruit. Monkeys are pretty good thieves, it turns out, and the locals never seemed upset about it. Hanuman Langurs and Bonnet Macaques were everywhere in Hampi. They were the UK equivalent of pigeons in a town square. Some deal we got in Blighty, shit manufacturers with no personality.