Easy Rider

A typical scene from the beach at Calicut.

Calicut, frankly, had little to offer except cable TV and hot water in the hotel. It is a perfectly ordinary city with a glut of small shops and markets and a local university to provide some intellectual capital. There is a respectable beach nearby. In all these aspects, then, Calicut could be the Wilmington, NC, of Kerala.

Still, it was nice to get away from Tirur for the weekend. It will be the last trip Jenna and I plan to take before meeting my parents in Kochi for Christmas weekend. We savored our showers and watched a little too much TV.

We walked around with Summer and Colleen for a few hours Saturday. Though Calicut is bigger than Tirur and possibly a little more cosmopolitan, its citizens still like to gawk at four Americans walking down the street. We drew crowds at the beach by simply staring out at the ocean. Schoolchildren waved and yelled, ‘Hello!’ to us from across large intersections.

Most strange, though, was an older man with leathery skin, a wild mop of gray hair and a scraggly beard. He came up to me on the city’s busiest street—an avenue of small shops and the city’s honking, fuming bus stand. He was wearing a torn button-up shirt and a stained cotton dhoti rolled up to above his knees. He had no shoes and his forehead was adorned with a white swatch of sandalwood paste, a sign that he was a Hindu and had been to temple that morning.

“Pee-ta Fawn-da!” he yelled at me without so much as a cursory introduction. I looked at him and smiled and continued walking. “Pee-ta Fawn-da!” he yelled again, keeping pace with me, grinning maniacally. I slowed down and looked at him questioningly.

“Your place?” he said, waggling his head. “Your place? Country?”

“America,” I said hesitatingly. The man talked so loudly that even on this chaotic street, our conversation was drawing attention from passers-by.

“Ahh, Am-ay-ree-kah! Yes, Pee-ta-Fawnda!” he said again. I was still unable to break his code.

I squinted. Summer, Colleen, and Jenna had stopped a few paces in front of me and were looking back. I looked to them for help, but they could not translate either.

The man was unperturbed. “Pee-tar Faaawn-da!” he said more slowly, still grinning.

“Peter Fonda? The actor?” I said. Surely that was not what he was saying.

The man nodded vigorously, breaking out into an even wider smile. “Yes, yes, yes! Pee-tah Fawn-dah! Hen-ree Fawn-da! You know? Jane Fawn-dah!”

“Uh, yeah. I know. My parents would know more,” but the man did not get my joke. His dress and his fixation with the Fondas gave me the impression he was some wayward hippie who had somehow been stranded in Kerala. And I was Dr. Stanley, finally come to rescue him.

“Jane Fonda!” he continued to yell, pleased with himself. “Cal-ee-for-nee-ah! EEE-agles! The EEE-gles! Hotel Cal-ee-for-nee-ah!” This sadhu was stuck in the Sixties, but this encounter would have fit perfectly in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. His catalog of outdated bands continued unabated: “Grand FUNK! Jeff-uh-sahn AIR-plane! Hall and OATS!” Spittle flew out of his mouth with each syllable; tendons in his neck stood out as he expectorated the words.

I nodded and smiled. “Yeah. I know them,” I said. "Old bands. Long time ago," I motioned with my hands, as if I was a shortstop calling for a popup.

The conversation took an inevitable turn. “You want marry-ju-wanna!” he yelled. Now it all suddenly came together. “Marry-ju-wanna! You want?”

I shook my head a definitive ‘no’. “I’ll pass,” I said, starting to walk away. The man still seemed pleased with himself.

“Am-ay-ree-kah, man! Cal-ee-for-nee-ah!” he yelled a final time after us, putting his thumbs up and smiling. He could have been Dennis Hopper reincarnated. He smiled one last broad, cracked smile then continued walking on his way.