Hanging Out
by Nick Mistretta
We were drinking chai at midnight, singing Bob Dylan songs and watching Wild Bill attack his guitar. A pack of wild dogs ran by and the six-fingered tea maker screamed over a swirling wind, and then set up four more fresh ones on the wooden ledge. The road was wet, mud puddles glimmering like magical pools of chocolate memories from some far away children's tale. Grinning monks sang with the globetrotting crew of moonlight junkies and philosophical misfits as the heavens spit out a few final drops. The Sunrise Café was preparing to shut down but not before we all got one more fix; it was after all, Mario's last night.
In McLeod Ganj, India, you can either hang out inside a restaurant or a makeshift cinema house or you can gather outside simplicity in a choice-less environment. The town is small but popular with all the world's nomads who shrug off first world comfort for reasons they can't explain, who come to India for revelations they have yet to discover. But the third world does have its moments; many in fact, and for most of my fellow friendlies, those moments found us outside a dusty little shack called the Sunrise Café.
The café is cozy, which means that it is small, so small that you can count the number of crammed chess players and tea drinkers on one hand and a couple of toes. A wooden table sits inside the broken-down building with three uncomfortable wrap-around benches underneath that form a horseshoe. Books, games, lanterns and a few trinkets share table space with well-traveled elbows, and photos of those immortal and homemade artwork hang from the dank wooden walls. The chai guy bobs and leans to the left of the slim entrance of two rickety stairs and in front of a gigantic windowless opening, sparking nostalgic minds to float across oceans, back to the local Dairy Delight in small town America or rural Anywhere. Hunched over three large stainless steel pots, he strains his tea into dirty little glasses as the Indians have done for centuries.
Across the narrow road from the Sunrise Café, several dilapidated benches of wood and metal prop themselves against a cluttered notice board. Space is at a premium on the inside, but the real excitement takes place out of doors, where forever friendships are forged on those splintered seats. Travelers squat in heated discussion or gig and dance to the homemade music or just sit quietly soaking it all in. Watching India pass by under the glow of a full moon while sipping a chai this is the backpacker experience in its purest form.
Gathering places are rarely extravagant. They don't carry the burden of their intent because there usually is none, and for this reason it is difficult to describe the common attributes of world class hangouts, if such even exist. People must be present, but other than that obvious criterion they can take any form. And once they are christened as such, they remain a place of wasted days and friendly greetings for many years.
The greatest thing I can say about the Sunrise Café is that it felt like home, and that feeling of belonging to something, somewhere, when you're half a globe away from family and friends and everything normal, that feeling is what goose bumps are made of.
Mario raised a glass on his final night and spoke about friendship and addressed each of us individually in a way only Mario could. He was our Godfather. We sang and danced like idiots in a mad land, outlasting the night and welcoming the morning. We were an odd gang, dreamers all of us, some quiet, a few performers of the world. Our common bond was being drawn together in that little town at a specific point in time. We shared something electric in those wild hills of Northern India, never to be outdone or recreated, impossible to forget.
Paradise lives in the moment, having nothing to do with coordinates on a globe or sand between the toes, and these moments are pure mental magic capable of transforming frowns to smiles for eternity and maybe longer. And even though we understand this, we are still saddened when we must turn to a friend and say, farewell.
The next day an ancient bus loaded with backpacks departed with Mario on board and another with fresh hopeful faces arrived, in the same manner as revolving plastic horses on a carnival carousel. Backpackers live by a different set of rules, non-rules really, but the one that troubles us most is the rule that says all good friendlies must one day leave. We've all taken the walk, those last few footsteps with a person we've spent the last week, month or longer with. Sometimes we're waving from the road in the shadow of other friends and other days we're the lonely soul gawking out of a sad window. And each time, we desperately try to stomp that feeling that arises despite optimism I may never see this person again. It is because of this that we learn to make the moment the only thing. As it turned out, I did see Mario again.
It has been nearly a year since those muddy nights huddled in front of the Sunrise Café, and I can honestly say it was a great time spent doing nothing. So when parents and friends and neighbors of all sizes ask what you did with all those hours not going to work or school, the answer is simple and true I was hanging out.
Nick Mistretta is
back from Australia and currently writing the first of many books
in the Rocky Mountains, presumably the ones in the United States
but we could be wrong. You just never know with Nick.
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