As our travels in India drew to a close, my partner, Deb, and I started making the gruesome transformation from travellers into tourists, with the strange result that we were doing a hell of a lot more travelling.
We were discussing our degradation with a group of our fellow India Heads. They were clearly unsympathetic.
“We are travellers, not tourists and we are each doing India in our own individual ways” they declared while their piercings and dreadlocks bounced and flapped together in unison as if to punctuate the point.
At one point, someone must have bounced when they should have flapped as a stray dreadlock became caught in someone’s nose ring. The unintended unification of such staunch individuals momentarily splintered the oneness of the group. Didgeridoos and juggling sticks splayed wildly in a tie-dyed whirlpool as the group struggled, leaving them most dreadfully locked together.
Only one bald chap, who had been cruelly denied dreadlockability by nature, was spared, but joined in the struggle anyway for fear of being the odd(est) one out. Not one clump of hair, nor nose ring, nor even prince albert escaped entanglement as the India Heads wrestled like (metallically and follicley) co-joined wookies.
Fortunately, being spoilt generation x-ers, the India Heads had all experienced braces as adolescents and were well versed in picking hair from metal. They were soon free again.
“Let us all hold hands and chant ‘we are all one’ as a testament to our shared struggle for freedom” implored one girl, a student, with a peace sign on her bosom and steel in her boots.
“No” interjected a holidaying lawyer wearing a designer Che Guvera t-shirt “Let us walk in a circle chanting ‘we are all individuals’ as a testament to our freedom from our shared struggle”.
In the end, a compromise was reached whereby the India Heads walked around in a circle chanting ‘we are all one individual’ each participant gently clutching a single dreadlock of the person ahead of them. The bald guy felt dejected that he was unable to join the group display of individuality, so he went off and did his own thing.
Unsure of what to do, we started heading off while the India Heads continued their circular procession as a testament to their shared logic. We departed unnoticed as the India Heads became caught in another unfortunate entanglement. They were debating which of them deserved the title of ‘traveller in residence’ for having spent the most months at the one guesthouse.
Make’s me proud to be have been an India Head.