Turned out that Pavan didn’t have any shame. After the last night he proceeded to chat to me as usual. I assumed his wife didn’t know anything about it. I, on the other hand, made him to give me a discount. He also arranged another home stay for me in Thekkady for half the price and a tuk tuk driver, who could take me there for only 1000 INDR.
However, there was a catch.
Pavan decided to come with me to Thekkady. He just got into the rickshaw with me.
I had 3 hours journey ahead of me with a non stop talking, over confident man, who (as I started to think) was hitting on me.
Luckily, the driver was his friend and turned out to be a very nice man.
After a while Pavan took a coffee flask out of a sack he brought with him. He took a huge swing out of it.
‘I will tell your wife you’re drinking’ said the driver. ‘My wife knows’ laughed Pavan and proceeded to drink.
The alcohol he had there smelled strong. It was 10 am….
After the booze started to work Pavan got even more energetic. He was telling me about how much money he had, what he was planning to do with it. He asked me if he was handsome… I was fed up with him beyond imagination.
‘Look!’ he shouted at one point ‘Kumily! Tourists buy weed there. Let’s go and buy weed!’ I shrugged my shoulders and said ok. I actually didn’t mind buying some. Pavan tried to convince the driver to stop and look for ganja, but the driver was scared and refused. Rightly so, I guess.
‘I want beer then’ said Pavan.
We stopped in a small town, but there was no shop with beer, so the last resort was to buy a special fermented coconut juice that is drunk by village folk. It has only 1% of alcohol, but it can still give you a nice high.
We stopped at the local shop and Pavan bought 2 litres of the drink, of which he drunk 1 in the first 30 minutes.
By the time we got to my home stay he was pretty drunk. However, when he got out of the tuk tuk the effect of the alcohol was gone. His eyes covered by the sunglasses couldn’t betray him.
When he finally left I sat in my room for 3 hours, laying in bed and enjoying the silence around me. I could still hear his voice, his dog’s barking and his daughter’s screams in my head. That night I dreamed he came back to spend more time with me. I really do hope this dream won’t come true…EVER.